What does the "streams" column mean?

[cybersteel8]

Hello!

 

I have a question out of curiosity. On the Dashboard, I see my SMB shares, and there is a column called Streams. I'm wondering, what is this column exactly?

I have only 2 docker containers running at the moment, but I have 152 streams to the appdata directory. Plex is like 70 streams by itself.

What are streams and why are there so many? Are these all active I/0 to the share, implying constant disk access?

 

I'd love a technical explanation! Thank you for attempting to satiate my curiosity

[Squid]

Streams are the active files open to the share.  Since you're showing items in there for appdata, I'd surmise that you're also using NFS (I'm not, so mine are always 0 for appdata since generally your containers won't access anything in appdata via SMB)

[cybersteel8]

Oh wow, right, so Plex has opened about 70 files in the appdata?
I don't believe I am using NFS - in the Settings > NFS is disabled. Is it weird that my containers are using so many streams each?
Is it also weird that I have my appdata share on SMB? I thought that was the correct way to point the container's config or data directory to it.

[wgstarks]

The default would be to have appdata on cache. My appdata path is /mnt/cache/appdata/plexmediaserver/

[Squid]

11 hours ago, cybersteel8 said:

Is it also weird that I have my appdata share on SMB?

If the appdata share is stored on a different server than where the container is running from, then yes that is a weird setup (although nothing wrong with it per se)

[cybersteel8]

23 hours ago, wgstarks said:

The default would be to have appdata on cache. My appdata path is /mnt/cache/appdata/plexmediaserver/

I am in the process of getting a cache disk setup to move it off the array and onto cache, but currently it is on the array.

 

12 hours ago, Squid said:

If the appdata share is stored on a different server than where the container is running from, then yes that is a weird setup (although nothing wrong with it per se)

Ah, no that's certainly not the case. On a fresh Unraid installation, there is a small selection of precreated shares - appdata, domains, isos, and system. The appdata share, when there is no cache disk in the system, seems to just save onto the array like any old share. That's what I have currently setup. This share, and all the shares I've created, have been created as SMB by default (which has been useful as I've exposed them to my network temporarily for some data loading via my Windows machine).

 

The way I'm describing it doesn't sound like there's anything weird with my setup, which is a relief.

The impression I am getting is that the Streams column is just the number of files currently active, and apparently certain docker containers keep dozens of files active at a time. Plex has about 69 (nice) streams active at a time. I consider that quite a lot, but I am assuming that is a normal number.

 

Is it possible to view each individual file the Plex application is currently streaming from the appdata share?