Measured on both shapes: ping returns success:true and healthcheck returns OK at the root whether or not the app is mounted under a prefix, which is why the phone app's connectivity check works before it ever resolves the base path. The paragraph now says which routes were probed instead of asserting 200s in general, and the frontmatter description fits the OKF 120-char budget the linter enforces.
The page owned the URL as a plain host:port; every client now carries the /audiobookshelf prefix. Added the two laws a next operator needs (why the base path is not a choice, why the redirect subfolder must be sent) and the Single sign-on section naming which script owns which half.
The live round trip died on authentik with Redirect URI Error. ABS builds redirect_uri as <origin><authOpenIDSubfolderForRedirectURLs>/auth/openid/callback, and that key is unset on a database created before SSO (the 2.17.4 migration only fills a DB that already had OIDC enabled), so the URL carried the literal string undefined. Arming through the API therefore has to send the value; it is the mounted base path, so it is derived from ABS_URL rather than becoming a second knob an operator has to keep in sync.
authentik-audiobookshelf-sso.sh is the IdP half kept in git: provider, groups, the abs_groups scope mapping and the redirect URIs. That state lives in authentik's database, and a blueprint re-import reverts hand-made rows silently, so it needs a re-runnable door. Tokens are HS256 because no provider on the fleet carries a signing key, which makes the client secret the signature key.
The stub server now records the auth-settings PATCH body, so the seam asserts the subfolder that reaches the wire follows ABS_URL for both the prefixed and root shapes, and a second seam pins that the provider script and the bootstrapper build the same redirect path.
ROUTER_BASE_PATH=/ served a healthy API and a web UI that could never boot. The index.html in the pinned image is built with routerBasePath:/audiobookshelf, so every script request fell through to the SPA fallback and came back as text/html, which Chrome refuses to execute. healthcheck, the API and the phone app all stayed fine, which is exactly how this hid behind an API-only deploy check.
The deployer now reads the mounted base path out of the unit and hands it to the bootstrapper as ABS_URL, so the API door, the login route and the OIDC redirect subfolder cannot drift from the unit. healthcheck answers at the root under either base path, so the health gate is unchanged.
The page told an agent how to sign in from a browser and nothing about the phone.
Measured 2026-11-03 on the deployed service:
- Server Address `http://192.168.0.235:8000`, user `frank`, plain HTTP, no base-path
prefix; `/healthcheck` and `/ping` answer 200 from a second host on the LAN and
`iptables -S INPUT` has no rule for 8000, so no phone-side setup is needed.
`download: true` on the root account is what enables offline listening.
- `POST /login` puts the bearer at `user.token`, not top level. Reading
`response.token` yields "", the client sends `Authorization: Bearer ` with nothing
after it, and every `/api/*` answers 401 as though the password were wrong — which
it was not. That is the failure I hit inside five minutes of scripting this.
- The LAN-only law gains its consequence for clients: the Anubis + Authentik chain
serves browsers, so guarding a vhost does not make the phone app work remotely.
Remote listening wants a VPN into the LAN; the LAN address is then still correct.
bats: 822 seams green.
The campaign-artifact home moved (42bc482) but the copy-paste surfaces still
named the old ones, and a tool's usage block is exactly what an agent runs:
- scripts/media-shows.py, media-tv.py, media-tvdupes.py: usage examples wrote
plans and journals at the array root. media-apply.py defaults its journal to
<root>/media-relayout.jsonl, so any run copied from those lines re-creates
the root-level clutter the vault now forbids. Each block now names
/mnt/entropy/.media-campaign/ and says why --journal is explicit.
- media-shows.py: --park named the retired media-park; the pile is
/mnt/entropy/NeedsProcessing/TVShows.
- Jellyfin.md: library-coverage law named /data/media-park; names the pile by
its current path and records when it moved.
- Media TV Relayout.md: the runnable --park path named media-park.
bats: 822 seams green.
The array root carried 48 planning artifacts (journals, plans, run logs)
accumulated by the relayout campaigns since 2026-11-02. They sit beside the
libraries now, which is how a media server ends up indexing a journal.
Moved all 48 (219.8 MiB) into the dot-directory `/mnt/entropy/.media-campaign`
with a journaled `media-apply` run (plan, apply, verify — 48 verified at their
targets, 0 root files left). Jellyfin and Plex ignore dot-directories, and the
overlay view exposes the array root to both servers, so the same pollution
existed on the view side.
Every vault page that named a root-level journal path is rewritten to the new
home (26 occurrences across 6 pages), and the law is stated once, in
[[Media Relayout]], which owns the tool chain: `media-apply.py` defaults its
journal to `media-relayout.jsonl` beside `--root`, so a run that omits
`--journal` recreates exactly the root-level log this now forbids.
- the per-library switches are under LibraryOptions, not top-level DTO keys
- Shows was flipped on 2026-11-02; Music is the only silent file index left
- never pin Providers= on a TV art loop: the TVDB-only offers disappear
- /Items?Ids= needs no UserId where /Items/{id} does, so verify writes there
A parked folder whose name parses to a registered show merges into the row
that owns the show. The proof is the episode rows standing under the owner
folder — never the id-less folder list, because one tvdb id can carry two
`Series` rows and an id-less folder that parses gets identified on its own
and keeps its own folder, offering the show twice.
No library file moves while `Scan Media Library` is Running: wait for a
Running sighting and then two consecutive Idle polls, because a gap between
sub-tasks reads as finished. Both sides speak different path dialects (the
server records the container coordinate, the journal speaks the array), so a
join that forgets the translation reads as an empty library.
Lands on [[Media TV Relayout]] — the page that owns the TV arm — so
`Media Relayout.md` stays under the OKF ceiling.
read_plan's if/elif chain had no else, so any row that was not mkdir, keep
or move was dropped in silence. A plan of nothing but typos therefore
applied as a successful no-op: on 2026-11-02 a pass meant to rename two
TVShows series folders reported "applied: 0 moved" and exit 0, and the
journal was never written — nothing told the operator the plan had never
been read. An unread row is a plan bug, and every other plan bug in this
tool refuses before the first rename, so now this one does too, naming the
line and the verb.
cwd: /home/blank/.omp/wt/wt-20261030-163847-6d1fc1f · session: 01a18f2e-18b1-7573-bcd5-ac99636f8bcb
Media Relayout.md crossed the OKF 500-line ceiling with the 2026-11-02 TV
laws, and the ceiling was right: the TV arm reads a different authority and
refuses for different reasons, like the music and audiobook arms that already
have pages. The arm moves verbatim to Media TV Relayout.md and gains two laws
from the TVShows pass: a folder naming two series is not evidence of two
series (ffprobe's embedded title tag answers per file), and right numbering
with a wrong name means rename the folder only. The executor page keeps the
executor laws and gains the hold-outside---root/--force law; Jellyfin.md gains
the settle read (ScheduledTasks State, since /Library/ScanStatus is a 404 on
12.4). Index regenerated with gen-vault-index.py.
cwd: /home/blank/.omp/wt/wt-20261030-163847-6d1fc1f · session: 01a18f2e-18b1-7573-bcd5-ac99636f8bcb
The existing rule says don't `pkill -f` a pattern your own command line carries,
and to prefer `pkill -x` — but a remote one-shot often has to name the pattern,
and hitting it again today cost a silent `ssh` exit 255 with zero output, which
reads like a network fault. Record the escape (`"serve[-]script.sh"`), the zsh
glob-expansion trap that makes an unquoted `[s]` a no-op, and the exit-code
signature.
The `Shows` flip landed today (one field, proven in the server's own
`LibraryOptions` answer), so the posture table no longer calls it a silent file
index and `Music`/`Collections` are named as the remaining ones.
Two corrections the same day's measurements force:
- The per-library `POST /Items/{id}/Refresh` answered `204` and queued nothing
both before the flip and after it — zero journal lines for ten minutes, and
`Scan Media Library` kept `LastTaskResult=None, EndTimeUtc=None`, the never-run
signature. The provider switch was never the reason that door is dead; only
`POST /Library/Refresh` runs (204, then `Running` inside 15 s at 33 % CPU), and
it walks every library, so a library-scoped pass has no door on this build.
That paragraph also records the null-pair read that separates "never ran" from
"just finished", and that query+body on the same call answers `400` with an
empty body whatever the values.
- The key law: a plugin owns its own config file under its own
`<PluginConfiguration>` root and omits null settings, so TVDB's `<ApiKey>`
element never existed and `install` refused — which is what `MISSING key` had
been reporting since October. PR #121 fixes the writer.
The `Shows` art census replaces speculation with the split that matters: 2,908 of
3,558 series+season carry a primary, 624 have no provider id, 26 have an id and no
poster. A `Download` campaign over them took 20 s and downloaded nothing, which is
the measurement that says identification is the only lever left.
TheTVDB writes its own configuration file and its serializer omits a
null-valued setting entirely, so a fresh install has no <ApiKey> element to
fill, under a root element called <PluginConfiguration>. xml_secret's
fallback insertion was hardcoded to </Configuration>, matched nothing, and
install refused with "no place to write <ApiKey>" — measured on Dankserver
2026-11-02, where the TVDB key has been present in the secret file since
October and has never been installable.
The anchor now comes from the document's own root, so both shapes Jellyfin
actually produces work (the core plugins' <Configuration> and a plugin's
<PluginConfiguration>), and the refusal is kept for a file with no root at
all. Tests: the plugin-written shape is red before this commit and green
after; every other setting in the file is asserted preserved.
Four laws from finishing the un-shadow, correcting one:
- A book whose files ALL fail to probe never becomes an item, so a disk-vs-DB
folder gap beside `Invalid data` lines is corrupt media, not a lost book. A
format-only ffprobe clears files the scanner rejects — do not trust it.
- `Disc 01`/`CD 1` subfolders are parts of one item (110 of them here, under a
192-track book); the extension census counts them, ABS does not.
- `.cbr`/`.cbz` group like media but `parseComicMetadata` throws `ERAR_BAD_ARCHIVE`,
so those items land media-less: the file, not the scanner.
- Scan completion is a NEW scan uuid; `podman logs --since` is a sliding window
and ages its own evidence out.
- `?force=1` is now recorded as neither discovery nor repair: a forced full
re-scan left item count, path set and media-less count identical.
Verification names the five book folders that need re-acquiring.
Corrects the law pushed earlier today. The mechanism is
`groupFileItemsIntoLibraryItemDirs` (utils/scandir.js), called on a live
`recurseFiles` walk of the tree EVERY scan: each file attaches to the FIRST
directory along its path that already has a group, so one media file at a
collection root owns everything beneath it. Measured: one 949 MB `.cbr` hid
652 book folders behind a single 5,693-track item.
- "Media file" is audio OR ebook (`audiobooksOnly=false` -> SupportedAudioTypes
∪ SupportedEbookTypes, 17 audio + 6 ebook extensions). An audio-only census
cannot see the file that hides an Audiobooks library.
- Deleting the covering item does not fix a shadow: grouping is recomputed from
disk and the next scan rebuilds the item (measured: `1 Added`, same path).
- Un-shadow by MOVE: one file per folder is ABS's own single-book layout.
- `?force=1` is not a discovery arm (both arms walk the disk; force re-scans
every existing item, 1:33 against 0:04).
- Paging corrected: `offset` is ignored outright, `page` is the parameter.
- `DELETE /api/items/:id` is a DB row; `?hard=1` is `fs.remove()` of the whole
swallowed subtree. Never pass `hard`.
Shape table gains the layout row and the move journal; the stale "1,103
shelves" scan count is destroyed.
Measured on the live library: 6 stray files at the root of _unsorted made the
whole collection dump ONE item of 5,693 tracks, with 542 real books folded into
it; no scan subdivides an existing item. Also pinned: the items endpoint hands
back ceil(total/limit)*limit rows because an out-of-range offset repeats the
tail (that is where "exactly 1,500" and "exactly 4,000" came from), and
DELETE /api/items/:id?hard=1 runs fs.remove() on the item's folder - pointed at
a covering item that is the whole subtree, so un-swallowing is a DB-only delete
after the stray root files are filed.
Two censuses this session reported exactly 1,500 and exactly 4,000 books for one
library mid-scan. Cause: an out-of-range offset returns the last item instead of an
empty page, so a loop written "until the page is empty" manufactures its own
total, and total itself moves while a scan is running. Stop on total; count after
the pass settles.
A per-episode RemoteImages query is never cached, so the same campaign that
dressed 620 series in an afternoon costs ~11 s per episode for one hit in five.
Across 42k episodes that is days of provider traffic to dress a fifth of them, and
clients show series and season art regardless. Recorded so nobody runs the pass on
a hunch; the door and the resumable log are the same if Frank orders it.
The first full scan logged "Invalid data found when processing input" per file and
carried on. That line is about the file: the scanner skips it, so the book never
appears in the library at all. Census of the 43 refused files: 38 were 0 bytes, 3
held WAV bytes behind a .mp3 name, 2 were unreadable. The check to run first is a
byte count, not a server investigation.
Full suite: 818 tests, exit 0.
The first full scan logged "Invalid data found when processing input" per file and
carried on. That line is about the file: the scanner skips it, so the book never
appears in the library at all. Census of the 43 refused files: 38 were 0 bytes, 3
held WAV bytes behind a .mp3 name, 2 were unreadable. The check to run first is a
byte count, not a server investigation.
Full suite: 818 tests, exit 0.
The page sent the next agent to POST /Items/{id}/Refresh?Recursive=true per
library to make a new folder visible. Measured against a Shows library that had
never been identified: that route answers 204 and queues nothing — item census
byte-identical, ScheduledTasks idle, journal silent, and still a silent 204 after
a service restart. The door that works is POST /Library/Refresh, and the progress
read is ScheduledTasks -> Scan Media Library -> CurrentProgressPercentage.
RefreshStatus on the VirtualFolders record stays Idle through a real scan, so it
is not a progress read at all; a 204 cannot distinguish accepted-and-discarded
from accepted-and-queued, so the acceptance read is the journal naming folders.
Also recorded the art door's wire shape, because guessing it reads as a server
bug: the list response carries the address in Url (there is no ImageUrl), the
Download POST takes camelCase type/imageUrl and answers 204, and PascalCase or an
empty imageUrl answers 500. RemoteImages is empty for items with no ProviderIds,
so art coverage is capped by identification, not by the image door.
The page sent the next agent to POST /Items/{id}/Refresh?Recursive=true per
library to make a new folder visible. Measured against a Shows library that had
never been identified: that route answers 204 and queues nothing — item census
byte-identical, ScheduledTasks idle, journal silent, and still a silent 204 after
a service restart. The door that works is POST /Library/Refresh, and the progress
read is ScheduledTasks -> Scan Media Library -> CurrentProgressPercentage.
RefreshStatus on the VirtualFolders record stays Idle through a real scan, so it
is not a progress read at all; a 204 cannot distinguish accepted-and-discarded
from accepted-and-queued, so the acceptance read is the journal naming folders.
Also recorded the art door's wire shape, because guessing it reads as a server
bug: the list response carries the address in Url (there is no ImageUrl), the
Download POST takes camelCase type/imageUrl and answers 204, and PascalCase or an
empty imageUrl answers 500. RemoteImages is empty for items with no ProviderIds,
so art coverage is capped by identification, not by the image door.
The page claimed the account can only be created from a LAN address; measured,
the door is POST /init and it answers plain text. Replaced with the bootstrap the
deployer now runs, and with the doors a consumer actually needs: /status reports
isInit with no /api prefix, the item count rides /api/libraries/{id}/items ->
total (the library DTO has no totals), and the list DTO carries media.numTracks
while /api/items/{id} returns media.audioFiles.
New law: the folder watcher cannot cross the rootless podman bind — the same gap
as Jellyfin's auto-scan note — so files added on the host stay invisible until a
scan runs, and the deployer's re-run of the bootstrapper is the cheap trigger.
Testing Policy lists the new seam; index.md regenerated from frontmatter.
A freshly deployed Audiobookshelf answers /healthcheck and is otherwise dead: no
account, no library, no scan. The UI registration step is gone by design — the
doors are POST /init (200 with plain text "OK", not JSON) and /status (isInit),
and there is no /setup route. That is an API-only bootstrap, so it must be code.
scripts/audiobookshelf-init.sh is idempotent: /status -> /init when unregistered,
POST /login for the bearer, POST /api/libraries for the Audiobooks library on
/audiobooks, then POST /api/libraries/{id}/scan. The deployer runs it only after
the health gate has answered.
Credentials live in ~/.config/secrets/audiobookshelf (mode 600): the bearer rides
an Authorization header and the password only a POST body — never a URL or argv,
where any ps on the host would print them. The seam drives an inline stub server
that logs every request line, and asserts: fresh bootstrap creates account,
library and scan; a second run creates nothing new and still fires the
incremental scan; no secret appears in any logged request line; a server that
refuses is reported as "refused: <url>" with exit 1 rather than success; ABS_SCAN
outside 0|1 fails before a single request; the deployer orders init after health.
Measured on Dankserver: run against the already-bootstrapped host it is a no-op
that re-fires the scan; the library then scans (1,500+ books, every item with
audio tracks, none invalid).
The first deploy of the unit failed its own health gate in the worst possible shape:
systemd said active (running), the engine logged a clean database init, and the
server then listened on :80 under base path /audiobookshelf - so every probe of
:8000 was refused and wait_for_health timed out at 180s beside a container that
looked healthy.
Cause: ABS_PORT / ABS_CONFIG_DIR / ABS_METADATA_DIR / ABS_PUID are the npm
package's names, printed by the server README; this image never reads them. Its own
contract, read off the pinned digest with podman inspect, is PORT=80
CONFIG_PATH=/config METADATA_PATH=/metadata, and the server greps for exactly PORT,
CONFIG_PATH, METADATA_PATH, ROUTER_BASE_PATH. The two path variables appeared to
work only because the image already exports the same values - the coincidence that
made the inert lines look correct.
The unit now speaks the image's names, adds ROUTER_BASE_PATH=/ so the service is
the plain host:port the docs and the homepage card promise, and the dead ABS_*
lines are deleted instead of kept as decoration. Proven against the same digest in
a throwaway container (temp state dirs, loopback-only mapping, removed after):
base path "/", listening on :8000, GET /healthcheck -> 200, and the old prefixed
path -> 404.
Guards: the quadlet seam now refuses an Environment=ABS_* line and requires
PORT/ROUTER_BASE_PATH; the vault page gains the law with its failure signature and
the two-second image-inspect check. Suite: ALL TESTS PASSED, 812 ok.
The page owns the shape, the first-run account step (ABS accepts the initial
account only from a local-network address) and the laws: why the array bind is
read-only and what the one-line rollback is if on-disk sidecars are ever wanted;
why the metadata view is not that rollback; why the mount gate, the wget health
check and the amd64 digest pin are each mandatory; and that LAN-only is a posture,
not an accident.
Media Audiobook Relayout gains the third reader: ABS stores absolute paths, so the
relayout procedure has to reach its library too or it keeps rows for folders that
are gone. The vault index is regenerated, not hand-carved.
Admin category, Media Library Apps section, LAN-direct url and probe like Tautulli:
the service is internal-only, with no vhost and no DNS name, so it earns a card and
no public link. The art is a mono-ab.svg monogram in the existing hexagon family.
Card counts in the e2e specs come from the live registry, so this entry is the test
update as well as the page change - and the admin walk will follow the link, which
is why the service deploys before the homepage ships.
Audiobookshelf serves /mnt/entropy/Audiobooks to browsers and phones with its own
library and per-listener positions. The design point of the unit: every byte this
server writes is its own state - SQLite library, accounts, progress, cached covers
- and all of it lands on the NVMe under /home/dank/Containers/audiobookshelf. The
audio bind is :ro, so a stray sidecar write onto the spindle is structurally
impossible rather than merely discouraged, and the array keeps exactly one
sanctioned write path (scripts/media-view.sh).
Three failure modes the unit is shaped around:
- Bind-source ordering. In a rootless unit RequiresMountsFor= is inert and
ConditionPathIsMountPoint= is fail-dead, so a missing array does not stop the
start: podman invents an empty directory and the first scan records an empty
library as truth. ExecStartPre=wait-for-mount.sh is the gate that works here,
the same one copyparty uses.
- The health binary. The image is Alpine: wget, no curl. A curl HealthCmd reads a
healthy server as unhealthy and Restart=always turns that into a loop.
- The image pin. podman records the linux/amd64 manifest for what it pulled, not
the manifest-list digest `latest` points at, so the amd64 digest is the pin that
names the build this host runs. Upstream version tags stop at 2.19.0 while
`latest` is newer, so latest@digest is the only form that is both current and
exact - the jellyfin/romm precedent.
The first-boot scan reads the whole tree once, so IOWeight=10 keeps it behind
playback; that weight is only honoured because the user.slice accounting drop-in
and the user@1000 delegation are installed by the deployer.
Deployer registration is the standard four touch-points (client gate, remote
allowlist + handler + dispatcher, planner order/set/path map, test routing). The
handler creates both state roots before the first start - letting podman invent
them leaves the SQLite file unwritable by the container user under a rootless
first boot - and gates on /healthcheck.
Measured 2026-11-02 against the live server. The per-library posture goes on the
page because two libraries are silent file indexes right now: Shows and Music
carry EnableInternetProviders=false, so a refresh on either answers 204 and
stores nothing — any metadata or artwork work there starts by flipping the
switch, not by scanning. Movies additionally has EnableRealtimeMonitor=false, so
a folder moved into /data/Movies stays invisible until a recursive refresh names
it; "Jellyfin does not see the file" is the designed answer, not a fault.
Recorded with it: the option door on 12.x is POST
/Library/VirtualFolders/LibraryOptions (GET answers 405 — that is how the route
is found) while the 10.x /Update and /Refresh routes answer 404 outright, and
the VirtualFolders DTO is PascalCase, so a census written against the old
camelCase keys reads None and misreports a healthy library as unconfigured.
A library record can also be a phantom: a 2026-11-01 capture carried Shows2,
Shows3 and Music2 with empty Locations while only four libraries existed, so the
live set is the entries with non-empty Locations and never the record count.
Measured 2026-11-02 while a TV dedupe pass moved folders on the raw path: the
merged tree still answered stat at the old coordinates, link count 0, while ls of
the same parent no longer listed the name. Overlayfs keeps a dentry for a lower
file moved underneath it, so a tool that tests existence with [ -e ] against the
view can believe a file its own readdir denies — the media servers walk by
readdir, so this bites a script and never a user.
Recorded with it: every pass that moves or measures media walks /mnt/entropy, and
the one reader allowed to point at the view is the tool that needs show identity.
media-tvdupes.py censuses a TV library by episode key and never by folder. 10 of
the 25 shows that looked duplicated in the 2026-11-02 census held complementary
halves (Game of Thrones Complete carries no S01 or S08, Modern Family S05 is the
only copy of season 5), so a folder-level verdict would have staged some 340 GB
of unique episodes to recover 54 GiB of true copies.
Show identity comes from the folder's [tvdbid-N] tag, from the tvshow.nfo the
metadata view exposes, or from an operator --ids map. A derived id that
contradicts a tag is dropped and reported, never unioned: Jellyfin's provider
table carries a 2026 special's id on the folder tagged [tvdbid-73838], and
unioning the two makes one show of a 2000 series and a 2026 special whose bigger
files then dominate the original's pilot. Files named by an id key only when the
server's own episode table (the --witness) names them, so a bare number is never
mistaken for an episode.
Seam: tests/media_tvdupes.bats — 12 assertions on which files land in the plan
and which the tool refuses to touch, on a synthetic library.
Frank
dank
Frank