Syntax Error while uploading MP3 songs to Auto-Dj

[Megaton Cafe Radio]

Thank you for the hard work Jim.
Unfortunately, it is still the same, there is no way we can upload anything on Centova Cast. We get the exact same error and this using any browsers, Chrome, Edge etc etc. Still same error message. We have been with Internet Radio for almost 5 years and this never happened to us before. Please fix this issue, as this is a real pain for us. Thank you.

P.S.
I can see that there is also a timeout issue now, the two bars are blue and filled, but then the wait starts and nothing happens and then the gateway timeout message appears. It is processing but seems to get stuck on it not doing anything else. Also once the gateway timeout appears, we can clear the song from the list with "remove" if we do that, then the whole media library disappears from the screen and becomes blank, and if we click "return" bottom left of screen it tries to load the page but nothing happens, stuck in a perpetual loading process.

Also if this can help you, i just discovered that we can upload about 25% of our MP3s with the Centova Cast control panel, the rest of the MP3s either gets the syntax error message, or the gateway timeout error. So it seems that it is not 100% of all songs and files but only certain ones.

 

[More Support]

Hi Rob

Yeah I see this too unfortunately. It seems like I jumped the gun a little and didn't test it thoroughly enough. Sorry about that!

It doesn't seem to be related to the MP3 files themselves as I can upload some songs OK on your account and get the error on a different account. For me and the files I tested it does actually always upload the MP3's fine, it just shows the error. Does the file always get uploaded in your case?

I've raised another support ticket with Centova on this and will see what they have to say.

 

[Megaton Cafe Radio]

Hmmm you are right, it seems that the songs are uploaded in the media library even with the error message.
Although, i can see that for some of the songs missing details, if i try to re-index the album to link it with title, album cover image etc, there is another major bug, the re-index function doesn't work, and instead again, just loads perpetually, then the it crashes with a gateway timeout error as well. Other songs i can still re-index correctly though, which is weird.

 

[More Support]

I think I may have cracked it. I spent a significant amount of time yesterday purging really old data in the database to get it's size down to something that I could run a mysql optimise operation on. I had to be careful not to lock the tables up for too long otherwise it impacts the control panels operation for everyone. This means "chunking" my requests so we have shorted lock times. Anyway, I have just run an optimise operation on the two largest tables which I hadn't been able to do up until now and I've just uploaded a bunch of test tracks that previously failed. I tried this on your account and another which had the same issue. Everything uploaded perfectly fine! (I've obviously deleted the test files).

The confusing part about this is that when I dumped and migrated the database during the recent control panel upgrade / migration this SHOULD have been the equivalent of doing an optimise on ALL the tables. I guess that's not the case and an interesting lesson learned here.

Can you confirm if you're able to upload correctly now?

 

[Megaton Cafe Radio]

Same exact error, Gateway timeout (xhr). The songs are still uploading in the end, but it takes an eternity because of the gateway timeout internal error.

Also many of those songs, when finally uploaded have their covers and purchase URL broken. It is also impossible to re-index those albums and songs because it starts a perpetual loading process that eventually breaks the whole control panel and nothing is responding unless a full exit and re logging.

 

[More Support]

I'm seeing the errors too. With your account it only seems to be a small subset of the files I try to upload that give me an error. For the most part I can upload my test files fine. This is what lead me to believe it was fixed. Sorry about that.

I've just spent some more time this morning running extra tests and have run some further repairs on the database. This seems to have changed the error to the bad JSON one again instead of the timeout. At least with this error there's no need to logout and login again after waiting for the timeout. It's obviously still not right so I've raised another ticket with Centova with some more notes on my testing to see what they say although I've tried everything the suggested to no avail.

It might be best to just delete and recreate your account. We did this with the other customer who had the same problem and the issue wasn't present on the new account and everything was fine. We can backup your tracks and ensure you get assigned the same username / hostname / port but you'll lose your logs / historical stats and your playlists will need to be recreated. If you're OK with this we can schedule a convenient time when your station is quiet and do it then. You'll be looking at 15-20 minutes of downtime for this, probably less. I reckon this is probably the best solution here as I'm not particularly optimistic Centova are going to be much help based on the tone of their previous reply.

 

[Megaton Cafe Radio]

We have 5 rotating playlists of 11h each + all the intros and ads. It means i would lose all that, and have to redo the whole thing again? This would take a tremendous amount of time and would be insane. There must be a way to keep our playlists if we go with a new account?

 

[More Support]

The mp3 tracks themselves can be easily backed up and restored just not their associations to a playlist. Centova does actually have an account backup / restore feature which I've had a poke around with today. It's not possible to a partial backup, only a full backup. This did get me thinking that doing a backup and restore on your account may help. I estimate it will take around 30 minutes to complete provided there's no problems. I'm willing to give it a try rather than resorting to a deleting and manual recreation of the account. I suggest early Tuesday morning at 6am UTC to be a quiet time to do this. Let me know if you would like me to go ahead.

 

[Megaton Cafe Radio]

Yes please that would be amazing if it works.
Full backup/restore early Tuesday morning at 6am UTC is perfect.
Thank you again.

 

[More Support]

I completed the full backup and restore at 6am UTC this morning and it took a little longer than I expected at 1hr. This was because of the large amount of historical data the account has. I'm not confident it's helped unfortunately. I tried some of my test tracks that failed before and I'm still getting a timeout. Can you confirm your end if the problem still persists?

 

[Megaton Cafe Radio]

Greetings Jim!
Sorry i was out of town the last 48h, now i'm back.
As weird as it sounds, the 1st time it was working on your end, and not on mine.
Well this time it seems not to work for you, but it works pretty fine on my end.
The songs are downloading like before, quite fast, good quality, and even the indexing is also running quite fine now.

I do not know why it is not working on your end, but it has been fixed on ours, so we are quite happy

 

[More Support]

Hi Rob

Interesting! This is such an odd bug :/ I'm really glad things are working for you now though as this has been quite the headache. I suggest you keep an eye on it though and update this thread if you see any odd behaviour moving forward. We'll continue to monitor other accounts for similar problems.