Hi everyone. I still have a fairly useless Sonos system and todsay I couldn’t play my boys birthday playlist due to indexing failure.

It’s been 1 week since my first post and it can’t be that no-one has any suggestion as to how to get this working again..please someone...

Rather than depending on the community for an answer, you always have the option to call Sonos Support directly to discuss it.

When you speak directly to the phone folks, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and network.

Your post doesn’t make it clear as to which version of the Sonos software you’re using. You mention PLAY:5s particularly, which could be gen 1 or gen 2. If you’re using S1, then there’s a good chance that your DROBO updated itself automatically, and turned off SMB v1, which is required by S1 (this is a common failure, if you read through many of the posts about this type of situation). 

However, if you’re using S2, then there’s likely another issue, but unfortunately, there’s just not enough data to tell exactly what it is. Could easily be some sort of wifi interference causing the speaker that’s attempting to do the process of checking the files on your DROBO to disconnect, which would cause the whole process to fail. But that’s just one possibility, there are other. 

Thanks Bruce. I feel like I’m being slightly told off, but thanks for the reply. I’m not depending on the community to answer my questions but I know from experience that community advice is often the fastest and simplest way to solve these sorts of questions, and calling support is very ofen time consuming and fruitless.

My Play 5’s are both 2nd Gen and I don’t believe I would have wifi interfence. When I have a hour to spare I will call supportt and see what happens. I will also report back to give an update that will hopefully help others that may suffer the same problem.

Certainly not trying to tell you off, I assure you. It’s hard, however, to always get enough grasp of all the variables in a post on the forum to provide an accurate solution, which is why I often suggest a diagnostic, which does (or at least I assume it does) provide hard data as to the issue going on. 

For instance, while your symptoms match an update to your DROBO software that would impact you particularly if you’re running S1 instead of S2, there’s nothing in your posts yet to confirm which of those two OS’s you’re running on your Sonos system. And if it is S2, then some sort of break in communication, such as WiFi interference, between the speaker that is doing the library update and your NAS could be ‘breaking’ that process. 

But we don’t have any information as to how your system is set up. Is it wired, either with a speaker or a BRIDGE or BOOST connected to your router? Or do these PLAY:5s hang off your WiFi directly? Which particular router is involved? All of these things can potentially have an impact on your specific situation.

It’s unfortunate, but at least for me, your thread was not presented to me until your second post. The first one never showed up in my set of ‘unread’ posts. And given both your frustration, and the length of time you’d been waiting, it certainly seemed like suggesting an immediate call with Sonos might help you get back on track, rather than a lengthy back and forth conversation as we’re having now. 

If you prefer, Sonos forum moderators have the ability to read diagnostic information, once they’re provided both the number of the diagnostic, along with the knowledge of what issue they’re looking for. Unfortunately, the rest of us unwashed masses, including myself, don’t have access to that data, which I presume is likely to some ‘sensitive’ personally identifiable data in them, at least from a legal standpoint. 

However, if you do want to hash it out on the forums, I am happy to do so. I do concur that frequently, an actual user of the system may have better knowledge than a ‘minimum wage’ phone rep, working from a script of some kind, but every time I’ve called in to Sonos for assistance, the person I’ve spoken to has been both knowledgeable and very helpful…I’ve not run in to any of these supposed poorly trained reps that I assume are some likely tiny percentage. 

Thanks again Bruce, and thanks for your offer to help. I would prefer to try and solve it here as I can pick it up outside of hours. Unfourtunately there isn’t a diagnostic as simply nothing happens. If I have the Music Library Prefs open on desktop Mac and then go to update the library from my PC I can see that the Mac sees the request and says it’s updating, but that stops after a second and nothing happens.

The Play 5’s do indeed just hang off the wifi when in normal use but right now one is plugged directly via ethernet to see if it makes a difference...it doesn’t.

My router is a TP-Link AX6000 which is pretty great and the signal is strong.

I’m running S2.

I use the same library in iTunes on my Mac (connected via ethernet) and it loads and plays fine so I don’t think there are naming issues causing problems.

Stuck...

Perhaps ‘nothing happens’ from your perspective, but the diagnostic submitted could be full of errors that would tell someone with access what issue is causing your perceived ‘nothing happens’.

One question, though. You say you’re running iTunes. Do you really mean the Music app from Apple? iTunes was retired quite a while ago. If so, have you tried a fresh export of your library to .xml, under the ‘save’ menu structure?

The methods by which your Mac accesses the data on your NAS is completely different than the way the computer that is Sonos accesses that data, so being able to ‘see files’ in one doesn’t mean much to the other. 

However, it’s good to know you’re using S2, that does remove one possibility. 

Keeping one PLAY:5 wired until we can resolve the access issue is probably a good thing. Removes just one more variable from the mix. 

Have you tried deleting the Sonos controller from your Mac, and then downloading and installing a fresh copy? In the grand scheme of things, that shouldn’t make a difference, but since I’m having trouble considering what might be blocking access, it may be worth a try, and should also force an update to all the firmware running on the speakers. Just be sure to ‘connect to existing system’ when prompted. 

Hi Bruce, Yes I meant Music not iTunes, but you realised that. What would exporting the library to .xml do? Something is definitely screwy….. So following your advice I deleted the app from my Mac and redownloaded and installed a new S2. It connected to the existing setup instantly and received the info of the library location from either the PC or the Play 5s ( you would probably know which). It didn’t try to update any firmware. I hopped over to my PC and set the path again ( just because) and skipped the window that asks for the username and password for the Drobo, as it doesn’t need one ( thjough previously I had this filled in) this time the library started to update. I could hear the Drobo ticking away happily. About 5 minutes later the activity stopped and I saw a message pop up on my Mac that said the library had completed indexing, but when I looked there was one library and the path to the library had disappeared from all controllers. Ummmm

OK, let’s take that one at a time….just because that’s the way my mind works.

1. Exporting the .xml would save a copy of any of your playlists in a format that Sonos uses, so that Sonos would be able to “read” them in your Music folder
2. The data for pretty much everything is stored on the Sonos devices, and not on the controller. So when your controller “knew’ where the files were, it was reading that from the data stored on your PLAY:5
3. It’s possible (although I don’t know for sure) that there was a stuck process on some device that was causing the process not to finish….although technically, there’s no intervention between your Mac/PC and this process. It’s supposed to be 100% between a Sonos device and the DROBO (is that supposed to be capped? Or is it just Drobo? Doesn’t matter). The deleting of the app, then downloading a fresh copy could have killed an errant process that was holding things up….or not. 
4. I’m not sure I understand why the path to the library had disappeared from all controllers, unless at the moment you pulled up the controller, the controller(s) had lost connection to the speaker(s) where that data is stored. Remember, the controller is merely a remote control that interacts with the actual computers running on the speaker(s).
   
   It may be worthwhile to do an easy refresh of your network, just to catch any outstanding issues, such as duplicate IP addresses, since you’re not going to run in to wireless issues right now, with the PLAY:5 wired. Just unplug all your Sonos devices and the DROBO  from power, then reboot your router. Give the router a minute or two to come back up, then plug back in your Sonos devices and the DROBO, then try a refresh of the library.
   
   It really does sound like there’s something undefined at this point killing the connection between the Sonos and the DROBO, as it seems odd that it works for some period, then stops. Again, posting a diagnostic really would be helpful in this case, especially at this point, so that the error that kills the scanning process would show up, and my fumbling around in the dark trying to remotely understand your system could be alleviated. 

Just a guess, but I’m wondering if the shared library (now likely running SMB v2 or higher) requires login credentials to be added to the Sonos App for library access? Maybe simply try adding the DROBO admin login credentials (if not tried that already) and see if that provides access to the library and allows the tracks to be indexed and gives access.

Back in the olden days when PC file sharing for Sonos still used SMB, a “secret” account named “Sonos” was created by Setup.exe and used to access the files over SMB. There was some ui to change the file ACLs too (to make sure the account had read access). Is this account still used when accessing a NAS SMB share I wonder?

I’d have thought the deletion of the app, followed by a reinstall, might have ‘fixed’ that potential issue? You’ve got a lot more knowledge in that area than I do… ;)

Although it does raise the specter of either a virus program or VPN of some type, set up oddly, blocking the access between the Sonos and the NAS? I really don’t know, but for some reason the OP has resisted all of my requests to submit a diagnostic, and have someone at Sonos look at the error log to tell us what is going on.