Hi all. I'm fairly new to Unraid, although I've been running a Plex server on my desktop for a couple years now. I was unable to find the official Plex Server docker support thread, so I was unsure where to put this topic. If it needs to be moved let me know!

 

I've got the Plex docker running on my server, and I'm seeing an almost constant 50-70% load on my processor (all 4 cores, i5-2500k). It appears to be a scheduled task of some sort, but I'm not sure what. Early each morning, it's at a true idle with only 5% or so being used, but at some point it kicks up to 50% and stays there all day. If I go to the console and use the "top" command, I see a process called "Plex Media Scan" using 50-70% of resources.

 

In an attempt to figure out what was causing it, I've turned off "Scan my library automatically", "Run a partial scan when changes are detected", and "Scan my library periodically". Library scan interval is set to "Daily", but I figured that doesn't matter since the previous setting is turned off?

 

I also have video preview thumbnails, chapter thumbnails, and audio track analyzation set to "as a scheduled task". I've got Scheduled Tasks set to run from 1AM to 10AM. I don't think that the "Plex Media Scan" process is a scheduled task, because it starts much later than 1AM, and continues after 10AM.

 

Does anyone know what else causes this process to run, and if I can schedule it at all to run at night? It's tanking the responsiveness of my other dockers and the sometimes the Unraid WebUI.

41 minutes ago, Ccheese4 said:

I was unable to find the official Plex Server docker support thread

There is no support thread for the Plex Inc. docker container in these forums.  You would have to post in the Plex forums to get support on that container as it is not a Limetech or unRAID community-supported project.

 

Perhaps someone here using that container will have insight into your issue.  I suspect it has to do with your scheduled thumbnail generation tasks as video thumbnail creation in particular can hit the CPU hard.

Edited April 22, 20206 yr by Hoopster

You mention that you've run Plex Media Server for a couple years, but I'm assuming this Docker is a new install. If you are building a new media database in the Docker, and you have just added new libraries, then Plex is most likely performing its initial scan and database build. If you have very large libraries, this can take days. If you are using the same media library as your old server, you should be able to copy the database over to the new server and save this initialization step. As Hoopster mentioned, you might be able to get further support on how to do this on the Plex forums. Alternatively, if you want a new database, start a new plex server and don't add any libraries on startup. Disable all the content generation options and tasks, and add one library at a time. You'll still have to wait for it to finish, but you might have more control over over the process. Good luck. https://forums.plex.tv/t/official-plex-media-server-docker-images-getting-started/172291

So I turned "preview thumbnails", "chapter thumbnails", and "analyze audio tracks" to the Never setting, and the server stayed at true idle all day. Sounds like it might be a bug then? I had them set to Scheduled Task Only, but they were operating outside of the schedule task window. Weird.

 

My library is about 470 movies, and it's just the one. I already wiped my old database files, since I made the switch a few months ago and everything appeared to be working. Thanks for the suggestion though. I'll see if anyone on the Plex forums has answers as to why these might be running outside the specified scheduled task time.