If your unRaid is a low power box, there really isn't an advantage if you need to do transcoding for the playback devices. Others here have Core i3 or more power on their unRaid boxes. The advantage then is to keep all server related apps and such centralized onto one box instead of spread around the house. That means you can have one "always on" box instead of 2 or 3.

 

Thanks Kricker... that makes total sense.

Update from my side;

 

0.9.5.2 was one of the best versions for me stability wise;

 

Later i started  using the 0.9.5.3a version initially which was giving my several issues, such as slow web manager and unresponsiveness.

 

When i went to 0.9.5.3b (Re-released package) this was all gone (I only still had my long standing unstable transcoding issue ), this version was better then 0.9.5.2).

 

Just went to 0.9.6 Beta and it seems to behave like 0.9.5.3a, somehow the web manager is unstable/slow(Not at initial start..but e.g. after some scanning) and is again showing unresponsiveness and requiring a process restart. Its really strange as the box is almost fully idle.

 

Wonder if anyone else experienced the same?

 

edit: Seems to do with the plugins and/or external provider plugins specifically (So i guess really media scan specific)..but can't put my finger on it.

I am running into a Similar issue and Spidi if you are reading this maybe you will have a little input.

 

I also experience a stalled scan etc. After I got everything up and running yesterday I got SAB/SB/CP working, Plex found all my media and I was able to watch media on my Macbook and on my Iphone.

 

When I upgrade to the Beta all hell breaks loose. My iphone can find the media, but can't play it. Playstation can locate the server, I get a Network Error (00000000) when I try to play the file. This is all very weird because 2-3 days ago I could play Movies on my Playstation. So this morning I deleted out the Beta .tar.bz2 and restarted. Boom, I can play videos on my Iphone again.

 

The beta does not appear to have a log-in section for myPlex. I am not sure if this has something to do with it. I have my port forwarding setup for plex on my Router, but I can only connect with my Iphone app if I use the myPlex on PMS.

 

All very weird.... 

The webinterface isn't very responsive thats right, but I don't go there often if not to say, never.

Why should I, because I set my initial sections and forget about it. SB/CP do the rest.

I don't scan the Library at all (with plex options). SB and CP are pushing the scans after a completed download.

 

I watched only one TV show with my PS3 and it worked then but I had some network errors too. (only if I paused for more then 30 sec.)

 

my iPad and my iPhone can both connect to the server, ( 802.11g/n network).

 

My main media center is an 2010 Mac Mini with Lion installed, so I have no need for transconding. (I try it sometimes for testing, but not more then 10 min)

 

Sorry folks, I have no Problem at all.

 

maybe you get some answers at the plex forum.

 

P.S. I have a myPlex login section under settings

 

I'm with spidi on the slow web media manager.  It is a little slow for me as well but I don't spend much time there so I just deal with it being slow.

 

My real problem is the Transcoder dying which requires a restart of plex to get it going again. Spidi, since you mainly stream to a Mac mini which doesn't require transcoding it makes since that you never have problems, but I'm really surprised that more people aren't having the problem with the Transcoder dying. I have had it on every build I've tried. I've seen others post about having it, but not as many as I would think. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who streams to a devices that requires transcoding on a regular basis and doesn't have any problems. I have to restart every 24hrs or so without fail.

I hardly use the web manager either, thats true, just added 5000 songs and forced the scan..which gave the issues. I'll leave it for now.

 

GDUB05: wrt transcoding - You know at least i have it too

I'm planning to raise it to Plex soon, though it is hard to put my finger on what is going wrong. Even when looking at the logs.

 

I'm in hotels a lot for work and tend to stream to my iphone to just watch some video if there isn't much on TV, hence i'm in a prime target group for having these issues In my home environment all is good.

My real problem is the Transcoder dying which requires a restart of plex to get it going again. Spidi, since you mainly stream to a Mac mini which doesn't require transcoding it makes since that you never have problems, but I'm really surprised that more people aren't having the problem with the Transcoder dying. I have had it on every build I've tried. I've seen others post about having it, but not as many as I would think. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who streams to a devices that requires transcoding on a regular basis and doesn't have any problems. I have to restart every 24hrs or so without fail.

I stream to a Roku, and from what I've seen everything is transcoded.

 

I've never had Plex crash on me and I've used all the versions they've ever released.

 

Cheers.

What version of unRAID are you on?  I am wondering if that's what is causing some of us trouble and not others.

The latest beta:  version: 5.0-beta14.  I also previously used 11, 12 and 13.  Probably even more, but don't have the binaries, so can't be 100% sure which.

 

My Media is all on the array, but the Plex binaries, Library, and Temp space, are all loaded to a separate disk that I mount at /mnt/Static.

 

No cache drive.

 

Not that it makes a difference, but I use Stokkes "Light version" to control.

 

Update:  Just checked.  The last time I restarted Plex:  Apr 01, 2012 14:10:39 [0xb59e9a60] INFO - Plex Media Server v0.9.6.0.11-ba33da9

 

Cheers.

Thanks for the info.  Man this is driving me crazy.  I can't for the life of me figure out why my transcoder is crashing.  I'm running 5.0-beta14 also, and all my media is on the array.  I just installed a cache drive and installed the Plex binaries and library there hoping that might help but no luck.  I've tried fresh installs, different versions, tried a test transcoder binary I got from one of the Plex developers but nothing has worked.  I have to say, I'm jealous of you guys that have this working without any problems.  I'm thinking I may try starting with a fresh install of unRAID since that's about the only thing I haven't tried yet. 

GDUB25 , what are you streaming to ? For me its an iphone.

I've tried everything as well and it still dies. I've had this issue with about 5 versions at least.

 

Also, do you already have a running topic over at plexapp.com ? If so i will add my information. I'm sure this is not anything on my end; I've tried various plugins, configs, etc. I also moved plex to an application drive, but it just doesn't matter. I have a pretty much barebones install, oher then having unmenu and plex.

 

GDUB25 & EddieA : What source content do you normally stream ? H264 for me.

 

Edit: GDUB25 - Found your post on plexapp...you have the exact same errors i had and already posted last year I never got a reply from plex, but happy to see you do so i linked my december post to it and restated i have the same problem, with the same errors, with all versions (Also i totally forgot i already found the error in the logs back then ! - don't see the errors in 0.9.6 though? but transcoding still dies)

I stream exclusively to an Apple TV.  Plex with Apple TV is our only source of TV in the house so we use it daily. My video files are all h.264 mkv, except for a couple mp4 and avi I keep for testing purposes. I have had a barebones install like you (unmenu and plex) until this past week when I added an app drive to see if that would help, doesn't look like it has though.

 

The developers at Plex are aware of the problem and are working to fix it. I think Tobias is mainly the one working on it. I think the more of us he's got to test for him the quicker we'll figure it out. I'm not the best help because I don't know anything about Linux or command line stuff.

 

I've only had the Transcoder die on me once since using 0.9.6 and I didn't see any errors in the log either. I restarted about 36 hours ago so we'll see what I get if/when it happens again.

GDUB25 & EddieA : What source content do you normally stream ? H264 for me.

Mainly H264 wrapped in mkv.  The odd avi thrown in.

 

 

Becoming clear to me the transcoding issues are not in transcoding per se but rather on how plex is handling it in certain scenarios.

I've just started ~50 transcodes manually directly on the same box, no issues. Good trace as well.

 

Ran it from my iphone a few times (Start/stop/start/stop..) and it all died; debug trace looks weird and is showing its stuck around file writing activity.

 

fyi: http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/38389-plex-transcoder-error-plex-requires-restart/page__view__findpost__p__254833

 

Having big issues trying to close Plex using the webgui. Have the databases on a user share, so the server cannot shutdown before Plex releases the files.

 

I found that doing a selective kill on the services with the plex user, after calling a stop on rc.plex, solved the issue. Is it possible for you to code this into the rc.plex file or the webgui start/stop/events?

if you tell me what you have done, I look into it! 

Haven't tried it, but: killall -u unraid-plex should do the trick. Place that command after rc.plex stop has been run, and make sure the script sleeps a good 5 seconds before running killall -u unraid-plex too.

ok, I will try it. But which processes are not closed? because I do a kill -INT for every process with plex in it.

There are a bunch of python processes opened, probably used by the webgui. These aren't closed properly. Everything opened with the unraid-plex user I presume would be related to Plex!

 

Hope that helps 

the problem I see is, if I do a killall -u $PLEXUSER

if someone runs Plex with root or nobody, you get a real problem. (and this is easy to do)

Perhaps do a check for that user & the processes first. Should be no reason for the average joe to run it as a different user, so shouldn't affect many people. If you do the check, that issue shouldn't occur (hopefully!).

 

To check if the user exists: grep 'unraid-plex' /etc/passwd

To check running processes: ps aux | grep 'unraid-plex'

Also, while I remember! Is it possible to display the link to the web interface as the IP instead of the server name? Mac users cannot use that link.

 

ifconfig  | grep 'inet addr:'| grep -v '127.0.0.1' | cut -d: -f2 | awk '{ print $1}'

 

That should get you the IP 

if I do it i will check with:

if [ $RUNAS == "unraid-plex" ]; then 

 

this:

ps aux | grep 'unraid-plex' 

gives me nothing, because the name is to long and ps only shows the id 

Also, while I remember! Is it possible to display the link to the web interface as the IP instead of the server name? Mac users cannot use that link.

 

ifconfig  | grep 'inet addr:'| grep -v '127.0.0.1' | cut -d: -f2 | awk '{ print $1}'

 

That should get you the IP 

 

I'm a Mac user and it works for me.... 

but I will look into it.

Could do the UID? UID is 999 for that particular user. You could run this code to do the check:

 

if(exec("grep '999' /etc/passwd | grep 'unraid-plex'")) {

  if(exec("ps aux | grep 999")) {

    exec("killall -u unraid-plex");

  }

}