[Support] Plex Media Server - Official

[Phreaknes]

1 minute ago, Hoopster said:

are you telling Plex to look in /media?

Where is that setting?!!?!  I need to check that.

 

[Hoopster]

6 minutes ago, Phreaknes said:

Where is that setting?!!?!  I need to check that.

 

When you add a Library in Plex, you use the container path as the folder setting as seen below.  Since I have a share for every media type, I only need /movies as the folder for movies,  /photos for photos, /tv for TV shows, etc.  Since you have just one main media share, you would also need to select the folder name that contains the appropriate media type, /media/movies for example.

 

[Phreaknes]

I tested that and I can set up those directories if I start a new server.

 

In the picture below if I can get that 'unavailable' server back i'm golden

[Hoopster]

9 minutes ago, Phreaknes said:

In the picture below if I can get that 'unavailable' server back i'm golden

I've only seen that when the container was not running, the server was unclaimed (after the Plex database hack, password change adventure) or I was logged out of Plex.

 

If not any of the above for you, perhaps something here will be of use.

[tvferret]

I'm losing hope here. I tried to setup remote access but whatever I do, doesn't seem to work. I configured everything as per guides from Plex. Everything seems to work OK but after few minutes/hours, Plex seems to be getting wrong WAN IP address and everything stops. Sometimes, I noticed that it will switch to the correct address for some time and eventually fail again. I have a two eth interfaces, bridged together as br0. There is a static route defined for this interface already. I turned off uPnP on my router and created a manual port forwarding. Still nothing. I have no idea what top do. This should've been an easy exercise but turned to be a nightmare. Any ideas? 

 

BTW, the wrong WAN address, I have no idea what that is, I do not recall ever seeing this address before. Not my ISP range, not a LAN as my LAN traditionally starts with 192.168.x.x and the address is 188.212 range. Where does this bloody thing get this address from?!?

[mgutt]

44 minutes ago, tvferret said:

Plex seems to be getting wrong WAN IP address and everything stops.

Which network uses your Plex container? If br0: Did you set a fixed IP address? Is it outside of your routers DHCP range?

[tvferret]

3 hours ago, mgutt said:

Which network uses your Plex container? If br0: Did you set a fixed IP address? Is it outside of your routers DHCP range?

All set correctly, br0 (host), fixed IP address etc. But I think I know what is going on. Browsing again through my router's settings, I went through the VPN client (I have a permanent OpenVPN client connecting to PIA) settings and bingo, I noticed resemblance of the IP address in Plex with the VPN IP address. I have setup a quite a wide rule to route the traffic via that VPN tunnel. I guess, sometimes Plex must have got routed via the tunnel and picked up VPN client's IP address. My bad  I turned the client off and I'll keep monitoring if the Plex's remote access remains on. Thanks!

[Biau]

How can I use plexpass for hardware decoding and stay on stable release ?

If I use plexinc/pms-docker I reveice version 1.29.X but no HW decoding
If I use plexinc/pms-docker:plexpass I receive 1.30.X with HW decoding.

 

Am I missing something here ?

[casperse]

Hi All

 

I am running the latest official Plexinc docker and I am now getting crashes and this error:

 

Critical: libusb_init failed

 

I dont have a USB tuner installed I use the proxy tuner from my SAT TV

Can I just ignore this error? after some time days the server gets unresponsive and in the log I only se a long string of:

Decoder information 249

 

Diag file attached.plexzone-diagnostics-20230409-1328.zip

 

[ConnerVT]

You can ignore Critical: libusb_init failed.

 

For the decoder error, try deleting your CODECS folder in the Plex Appdata.  When you start up Plex, it will go out and download a fresh copy.

[VIthe3rd]

 

Since the last update to Plex I have noticed that the CPU usage is maxed out all the time. It is brining UnRaid to a crawl. At first I thought it was due to it managing 4+ TBs of music. So I axed that dir out. But still after several hours CPU usage would ramp up. I axed remote accesses. Thinking something or someone was in there. Again after several hours it again ramps the CPU sky high. Now I have ran out of ideas on what is causing this.

 

The only way I knew something was wrong was after the latest update. Normally my box is dead silent. Till I noticed that the cooler fan was whining like it was pegged at 100%. Never did that before.

 

I kill Plex and the CPU drops and the fan goes silent. 

I am a novice at UnRaid and Docker apps..... But I can fumble my way through being somewhat successful at finding errors mostly of my own doing. But this has me puzzled. This box only is used for media. Nothing else yet.

 

 

[krazijoe]

On 4/16/2023 at 5:26 PM, VIthe3rd said:

 

Since the last update to Plex I have noticed that the CPU usage is maxed out all the time. It is brining UnRaid to a crawl. At first I thought it was due to it managing 4+ TBs of music. So I axed that dir out. But still after several hours CPU usage would ramp up. I axed remote accesses. Thinking something or someone was in there. Again after several hours it again ramps the CPU sky high. Now I have ran out of ideas on what is causing this.

 

The only way I knew something was wrong was after the latest update. Normally my box is dead silent. Till I noticed that the cooler fan was whining like it was pegged at 100%. Never did that before.

 

I kill Plex and the CPU drops and the fan goes silent. 

I am a novice at UnRaid and Docker apps..... But I can fumble my way through being somewhat successful at finding errors mostly of my own doing. But this has me puzzled. This box only is used for media. Nothing else yet.

 

 

https://support.plex.tv/articles/201697383-why-is-plex-transcoder-using-my-cpu-when-nothing-is-playing/

 

See if that helps.

[VIthe3rd]

On 5/2/2023 at 4:58 PM, krazijoe said:

https://support.plex.tv/articles/201697383-why-is-plex-transcoder-using-my-cpu-when-nothing-is-playing/

 

See if that helps.

I did find that article and went through it. Doing some of the tips in it helped with the CPU usage. Now it hovers around 50% usage. Also PLEX had an update since I posted this. The usage is still more than I would like to see. I Shut down PLEX when I know I am not using it right now. Seems easier than searching for the issue.

 

Thanks for the reply though. 

[Jason Hoyt]

Basically, a noob on this forum. I did a bad thing. I updated the Plex container when my cache drive was full. I don't think it installed right. Either that or my database got corrupted in that process. Now I just get:

Starting Plex Media Server.
Error loading shared library libhdhomerun.so: Exec format error (needed by /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server)
Error relocating /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server: hdhomerun_device_create_from_str: symbol not found
Error relocating /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server: hdhomerun_device_get_device_id_requested: symbol not found
Error relocating /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server: hdhomerun_discover_validate_device_id: symbol not found
Error relocating /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server: hdhomerun_device_get_var: symbol not found
Error relocating /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server: hdhomerun_device_destroy: symbol not found
Stopping Plex Media Server.
kill: usage: kill [-s sigspec | -n signum | -sigspec] pid | jobspec ... or kill -l [sigspec]

Over and over. I did get it to run by repulling the previous container: 

plexinc/pms-docker:1.32.0.6973-a787c5a8e

 But even then, it would bring up Movies but not TV Shows on Roku. I could get to TV shows in an round-a-bout way on my iPad. But now even the older version is throwing this error too. I do have 2 HDhomeruns configured in Plex.

Any ideas? 

Edited May 22, 2023 by Jason Hoyt

[mgutt]

6 hours ago, Jason Hoyt said:

Any ideas? 

Backup your appdata dir. It contains the database of Plex of the date before you updated the container.

 

First try would be to copy the whole dir and rename the database of the date before you made the update. Then install 1.32.0.6973 with this dir.

 

If this does not work, you could try to do a fresh install of 1.32.0.6973, stop Plex and replace the database file. By that your meta data will be completely lost and needs to be rebuild.

 

Note: the database uses two files.

 

Location:

 

/mnt/user/appdata/<Plex>/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Databases

[Jason Hoyt]

Thank you so much. This worked. Renamed Database to .old, copied over the 2 previous .db files into new Database folder, rename extension. And then after cleaning up all the other stuff I was trying, it worked.

Throwing this error now:

Critical: libusb_init failed

but seems to be working. Half the posts say ignore it; the other half say it's an issue. But for now, the wife and MIL happy.

Again, thank you.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Jason Hoyt

[tibbaroo]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm after some guidance or recommendations.

 

I've followed IBRACORP's plex setup and hardlinks etc and also have pmm up and running. Everything is working fine except the posters not loading on newly added movies/tv series, a refresh of metadata within plex fixes the posters but I'm trying to find a working solution to avoid this.

 

I've tried just about every "agent" fix/configuration there is online so I don't believe it's an agent issue. I've also nuked the plex container and started again, however the same issue has occurred.

 

Now there is something I did that completely fixed the issue but I am not sure it is the recommended configuration to do:

 

I changed the appdata config path from /mnt/cache/appdata... to /mnt/user/appdata/...

 

To me this seems not the best solution as now plex is constantly writing to array. Appreciate the feedback,

 

 

cheers

 

 

[trurl]

16 minutes ago, tibbaroo said:

now plex is constantly writing to arra

This suggests you have your appdata User Share configured to write to the array. 

 

Attach Diagnostics to your NEXT post in this thread 

[tibbaroo]

2 hours ago, trurl said:

This suggests you have your appdata User Share configured to write to the array. 

 

Attach Diagnostics to your NEXT post in this thread 

 

Thanks trurl,

 

Looks like you've directed me in the right direction and it appears my appdata is set to shareUseCache="prefer"

From diag:

appdata                           shareUseCache="prefer"  # Share exists on cache, disk1, disk2
d--a                              shareUseCache="yes"     # Share exists on cache, disk1, disk2
domains                           shareUseCache="prefer"  # Share exists on cache
isos                              shareUseCache="yes"     # Share exists on disk1
system                            shareUseCache="prefer"  # Share exists on cache

 

 

Does that look correct?

[ryankenn]

I had my server go down tonight (hard down) as the power was out and I wasn't home so the battery backup ran out of juice.  On restart because everything was off I updated Unraid to 6.12.1, and updated the Plex docker while I was at it.

 

Now I cannot access Plex from anything.  In the console, when I click the icon, normally the top option is WebUI and it lauches the app on my laptop, no it just says >_ console and lauches a blank window with a number sign.  No devices can access the server.

 

In the tower is says started, but at this point it say uptime is 55 mins (unhealthy).  I don't know if it has to do some work first before its accessible, I do have over 7TB in the folders it accesses.  But I am pretty certain in the past it just came up almost instantly and was usable right away.

 

I know the files are there as I can see the folders through remote desktop and play the files.  

 

Any tips are welcome, thanks.

 

**Aside**, in the past I just rebooted the server and it would work.  This time it asked for a USER/Pass.  When I accessed it from my laptop I had to set a password to get the GUI up, default was root and I had to set a password.  I am not sure I ever had that before, don't know if its just a function of this latest update or not.

 

dhcplog.txt docker.txt syslog.txt Docker Log Plex.txt

[Can0n]

 

So a few days ago I decided I wanted to migrate my old dual 1TB Cache SSD’s from BTRFS to ZFS (unraid 6.12.2) I had already set a 4 disk zool pool i call download-cache

I stopped docker and VM manager and set the share to migrate to the array (which is on xfs) when mover is invoked. I used mover to move the appdata folder to the array then used rsync -avz /mnt/user/appdata /mnt/download-cache/apps/ 

i updated the mapping to the for Plex to /mnt/user/apps/PlexMediaServer thats on the download-cache and saw Plex worked.
 

I since shut it all down and used rsync again to move from the 4drive zpool (spinner disks) to the 2 Drive zPool (formerly a BTRFS pool) called cache
 

Now when i launch plex it is setting up like a new server with a random name… if i stop it and update the config path to the 4 drive pool it works again.

The claim code in the container config has not changed not sure where to look to make sure it launches the same name and instance of Plex on the new location with the 2 drives

really struggling with trying to get this back on my SSD's if cant be the filesystem as the download-cache is zfs as is the cache

when it didnt work the first time i went back to BTRFS and it worked again on the cache

any help would be greatly appreciated.

[mgutt]

1 hour ago, Can0n said:

Now when i launch plex it is setting up like a new server with a random name

Then Plex has created appdata files of the new Installation. Check with the File Manager Plugin or similar where the files have been created.

 

And I'm not sure why you used rsync. If you are changing the cache pool of appdata, you simply need to select the new pool in the appdata share settings and then start the mover again.

[Can0n]

10 minutes ago, mgutt said:

Then Plex has created appdata files of the new Installation. Check with the File Manager Plugin or similar where the files have been created.

 

And I'm not sure why you used rsync. If you are changing the cache pool of appdata, you simply need to select the new pool in the appdata share settings and then start the mover again.

i used rsync becasue mover wont move files off of zfs

the rsync moved all files from apps2 on the download-cache to appdata on the cache it retained the timestamps, permissions and users/groups from the download cache

my plex config folder is approx 214GB so rather large no way to move it from one cache to other and it took over 4 hours to for mover to move from cache to array and array to download-cache

once i tried to move it back to array it completely failed mover just stops for no reason so was stuck using rsync which actually took about 45min to copy all the containers from appdata that i put to "apps"

I verified database files are there and all the files that should be there are...

when i load from a URL i configured to get me there using internet DNS i get the interface and all my libraries have a triangle

when i map the plex contain back to the apps folder on download-cache it loads my server and libraries just fine

[Can0n]

7 hours ago, mgutt said:

Then Plex has created appdata files of the new Installation. Check with the File Manager Plugin or similar where the files have been created.

 

And I'm not sure why you used rsync. If you are changing the cache pool of appdata, you simply need to select the new pool in the appdata share settings and then start the mover again.

 

so looking up mover, now running it and its been over 7 hours trying to move to the array

appears mover is just using rsync anyways so wondering what the full rsync string is in mover so I can try and do a copy not move using the same options as mover so I can keep a working copy of plex on the array should the move to the cache fail again for whatever reason

is it by chance this script here?

https://gist.github.com/fabioyamate/4087999

[Can0n]

23 hours ago, Can0n said:

i used rsync becasue mover wont move files off of zfs

the rsync moved all files from apps2 on the download-cache to appdata on the cache it retained the timestamps, permissions and users/groups from the download cache

my plex config folder is approx 214GB so rather large no way to move it from one cache to other and it took over 4 hours to for mover to move from cache to array and array to download-cache

once i tried to move it back to array it completely failed mover just stops for no reason so was stuck using rsync which actually took about 45min to copy all the containers from appdata that i put to "apps"

I verified database files are there and all the files that should be there are...

when i load from a URL i configured to get me there using internet DNS i get the interface and all my libraries have a triangle

when i map the plex contain back to the apps folder on download-cache it loads my server and libraries just fine

 

 

Well it was the most painful move ever 15 hours of mover trying to move 214GB plex folder. I ultimately using rsync with -avh to move the folders with smaller and more files and let mover handle the database files 

took nearly 24 hours but I got Plex up and running on a ZFS pool now with no watched status lost for myself ore my users! I took a snapshot right away