The root cause of scanner failures in Podman containers was NOT that
inotify doesn't work through bind mounts (it does — same kernel, same
inodes). The real bug was SetFolders() only watching root directories.
Linux has no recursive inotify — every subdirectory must be added
individually to the watcher.
Changes:
- SetFolders() now walks all subdirectories and adds each to the watcher
(same approach as Audiobookshelf/Kavita)
- Remove broken mtime-based detection: seedDirectoryMtimes,
pollDirectoryChanges, detectChangedRoots, checkDirectoryMtimes,
SyncFilesystemWithDatabase — all unreliable in container overlay mounts
- Replace StartPolling with startBackupScan: enqueues full JobTypeScan
every 5 minutes (down from 30) as a safety-net fallback
- enqueueLibraryScan() sets job.UserID from admin ID so the worker can
broadcast WebSocket messages
- performInitialScan() sets job.UserID for the same reason
- Add [WATCHER] prefix logging to all fsnotify event loop messages
- Add defense-in-depth: fallback to GetFirstAdmin() when library has
no created_by_admin_id (NULL from test cleanup)
- Fix processDirectoryScanJob to use prefix-match (GetLibraryByFolderPathPrefix)
- Fix nil context panic: all jobs now set Context: context.Background()
- Remove mtime-related tests; update default interval test from 30m to 5m
Podman rootless containers with overlay storage do not propagate inotify
events through bind mounts, making the fsnotify file watcher ineffective.
This caused new files added on the host to go undetected until the
5-minute full-filesystem-walk polling fallback caught them.
Add a lightweight directory mtime polling mechanism that runs every 10
seconds, checking stat() on all subdirectories under watched library
folders against a cached mtime value. When a directory's mtime changes
(indicating files were added/removed/renamed), it feeds into the existing
markDirectoryDirty() → processDirtyDirectories() → job queue pipeline.
Changes:
- Add dirMtimes cache + mutex to MediaScanner struct
- Add seedDirectoryMtimes() to populate cache on startup (prevents
false-positive flood on first poll)
- Add pollDirectoryChanges() goroutine (10s ticker) and
checkDirectoryMtimes() (walks directories, compares mtimes)
- Launch mtime poller from WatchChanges() alongside existing goroutines
- Rename StartPolling logs to [ORPHAN-CLEANUP] to clarify its role
- Change default poll interval from 60s → 30m (new file detection now
handled by the fast mtime poll; full sync focuses on orphan cleanup)
- Update GetScanSettings default from 60 → 1800 seconds
- Add 5 tests: seed cache, skip nonexistent, detect new dir, skip
unchanged, detect modified dir
Expected result: new files detected in ~20 seconds (10s poll + 10s
debounce) regardless of inotify/container support.
Worker improvements:
- Add strongly-typed result structs for all job types
- Replace map[string]interface{} with specific result types
- Add JSON tags to JobResult for proper API serialization
- Fix processJob to handle different result types correctly
- Improve directory scan job with proper library folder resolution
- Add debug logging for scan operations
Media scanner improvements:
- Add nil checks for database in GetPollInterval and GetAutoScanEnabled
- Fix pdfcpu API call signature (add validateOnly parameter)
- Add debug logging for scanDirectory with file counters
- Improve error handling and reporting
Test fixes:
- Fix default poll interval expectation from 30s to 60s
- Add settingsCache initialization to scanner tests
- Add folders initialization to ProcessDirtyDirectories test
- Add unit tests for MediaScanner.GetPollInterval and GetAutoScanEnabled
- Add integration tests for scan-settings API endpoints
- Update validation test cases to use seconds (1-3600) instead of minutes
- Fix worker.go to use new NewMediaScanner signature
john-okeefe