Work through these in order. Each one is quick, and they are arranged so the common causes come first.
1. Is writing actually on?
Status › Writing. If it says Dry run, that is your answer: vodmatic is working perfectly and deliberately writing nothing. Settings › Write mode turns it on.
If it says Blocked, the licence is stopping writes. See Licence and plan size.
2. Has anything run recently?
Status › Last processed. If that is over an hour ago, the worker is not running and nothing else on this list matters. Open a ticket and say so — that one is ours, not yours.
3. Is anything waiting for you?
Status › waiting on you. A held season stops every episode of that series, and their subtitles with them. One answer on Needs attention can release sixty files.
4. Can it reach your media server?
Library › your storage connection › Test. It makes a real connection and lists what it can see.
Read the sample paths. Connecting successfully to the wrong directory looks exactly like success and finds nothing.
5. Can it reach Ministra?
Status says Connected or it does not. If it does not, the message is the database's own. The usual causes are a changed MySQL password, a firewall, or the portal server having moved.
6. Has a scan actually found the files?
Library › the folder. It shows how many files are in each state. If the total is zero, the scan found nothing:
- The base directory or the folder path is wrong — see step 4.
- The folder is deeper than the scan depth set for it.
- A minimum file size is set that excludes everything.
- Ignore rules are excluding more than you meant.
Start a scan by hand from that screen and watch the count.
7. Were they skipped as already there?
vodmatic checks whether a file is already in your portal before adding it. If a file was in Ministra before vodmatic existed, it is left alone — that is correct behaviour, and it is why a first run on an established portal adds far less than you might expect.
Activity shows this per file, with the reasoning.
8. Are there failed jobs?
Status › failed. Read three or four. A hundred failures are usually one cause. See Error messages, explained.
9. Are you over your plan?
Status › Plan. Going over does not stop anything — but it is worth knowing.
If you get to the end of this list
Open a ticket and include: what Status says under "What needs looking at", what Last processed says, and the message from one failed job if there are any. Those three tell us most of what we need.
