How to Conduct a Forced Rebuild of the .erdinfo File

Introduction

If when using the traditional recording method (i.e. File Server is the Primary Recording Target), you cannot access the recordings for a specific camera then it is possible that the .erdinfo file has become corrupted. In this case you will need to conduct a forced rebuild of the file to rectify the issue. The .erdinfo file is the cameras index of events and sequences of the stored data. As a result when it becomes corrupted the order of events can not be defined, causing the camera and / or the viewing software to crash.

Procedure

  • Disable Recording and Reboot

erdinfo_1

  • Go into the share folder for the specific camera
  • example /mobotix/10_0_117_27
  • Find & remove the .erdinfo file in that folder

erdinfo_3

  • Enable Recording and Reboot

erdinfo_4

  • The camera will then rebuild the .erdinfo file.
  • During the boot the camera looks for this file and will search the entire storage medium for its files and rebuild the .erdinfo file.
  • This may take some time depending on how large the storage medium is. You can check to see if the camera is still initializing by checking the camera status page for INIT in the External Storage section.

Please note that during the re-build process the camera will not be able to record. Hence, proceed only if you can afford to miss some footage!

Factors that could cause the corruption of the .erdinfo file

Possible causes of a corrupted .erdinfo file may include:

  • Problems delivering images through the network to the NAS
  • The NAS not being able to cope with throughput
  • Somebody moving already registered files from the storage

Conclusion

The .erdinfo file is the cameras index of events and sequences of the stored data. As a result when it becomes corrupted the order of events can not be defined, causing the camera and / or the viewing software to crash. The remedy to this issue is to conduct a forced rebuild of the file, as outlined in this document.

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Hello, thanks for this post which has been very helpful but we still have problems with the rebuild because when we check the events from the MXmanagement Center, we can see events that are listed on several dates, but when we want to see the video in some of those dates, the calendar jumps to another date and it doesn’t stay in the date provided, but when we check the NAS folders, the information is still there. We have a QNAP NAS for storage and due to a storage FULL issue, we have lost the connection of the cameras and the NAS but we changed the storage settings on the cameras to less days (instead of unlimited) and also limited GB, also we emptied the recycle bin as well, this gave us enough free space to get the cameras communicating with the NAS again but after that it seems that the .erdinfo got corrupted and we couldn’t find older events once we did the procedure listed here in this post. After the .erdinfo rebuild we now see the old events but there is an issue with some events that are not shown despite that there are in the NAS. One thing we did noticed is that when we accessed the camera folders using the QNAP File Station (file manager) app in order to make sure the video sequences were there, we were able to confirm that the video files are there but their dates were kind of changed by the QNAP to the date we opened them… why it did that? we don’t know, but that seems to have created a problem with the rebuild of the events database and we need to know how to fix the files so that we can redo the rebuild again or is there Is any app to fix that? or a procedure.

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Hi Clauserg,

This issue will need to be investigated in further detail. Can you please extract a camera report, via http:///admin/report.dmp and send it to support-intl@mobotix.com?

Regards,

Michael Defaweux

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Hello Michael I just sent you two E-mails with the camera support file, pease use the very last one cause it has the camera report that I just downloaded it.

If you need access to the NAS using teamviewer from my computer just let me know or if you want me to call you so that I can further explain what’s going on. Like I said, the rebuild procedure did work and now we can see all the events being listed in the camera’s web interface event list and the MX-Management center’s calendar button that we drag to find the events but all those files that we did click from the file manager of the QNAP NAS, to see folder contents or what was the JPEG file, the camera can’t find them even though the .erdinfo did add them in the camera event list, and the files are still in the same folder but when you look at the “modified” column of the file manager app inside the NAS, the file indicates the date of when the file was clicked out and seems that may be the reason why the rebuild of the .erdinfo file can’t see them.

We have a problem with a folder that is corrupt, we cannot stop working with the camera because it is a sensitive area, so it was decided to rename the folder and have the camera create a new one, now we need to see the saved information. Is there a player so you can see the information? Can mobotix repair the erdinfo file?

Hello katt,

If the .erdinfo file got corrupted and the above mentioned procedure to force the rebuild by camera should fail, the unfortunately the data seems to be beyond repair. The state of the individual data might also be suboptimal for further processing. This depends on the actual reason why the .erdinfo had gotten damaged. This usually happens when the camera often experiences problems while writing data to the destination folder. And just as the .erdinfo file, other data related to the actual clips might also be damaged, or might only consist of empty files.

You can still access the folders within the file structure and open the individual event images (E00000.jpg) in order to at leas see the images recorded when the event triggering recording took place.
Perhaps you can run a script on this structure to get them all collected and view them image by image.
But the clips will not be recovered this way.

You can access the clip material (as good or as bad it is stored on the server) using ManagementCenter.
Bildschirmfoto 2020-01-03 um 14.54.19
Select “Recording” and browse to the location of the old folder.


Once you have selected it, and clicked “Open” in your file browser window, ManagementCenter will Import the data.
After the Import is done, the folder will be available in “Clips & Recordings”.
Bildschirmfoto 2020-01-03 um 15.34.07

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