When Scan my library automatically is checked plex doesn’t respect .plexignore.
My specific situation:
Sonarr grabs, downloads and dumps everything in to /Download. Once the download is complete Sonarr will rename and hardlink the episode in to the correct series/season location.
Plex “senses” the file system change and add the correct episode as expected while ALSO adding the /Downloads file to some weird show called “Download”.
Upon the normal hourly scan Plex will no longer remove the unwanted show.
With that option enabled, Plex will only look in the directory that changed. So you need a .plexignore file in that folder. It is not able to scan up the folder tree to find the .plexignore file at another location. This is one advantage and disadvantage of using that “automatic scan” feature.
Is that Downloads folder also inside of the folder that makes up your Plex library? If so, that’s not a good idea. Plex will keep seeing the file change as it keeps writing into that folder.
So “Show.s01e03.mkv” gets downloaded into TV\Downloads (because that’s how it’s always been and it’s always worked… unless Automatic scans is ON) and PMS recognizes this change and scans \Downloads for… reasons.
Sonarr will normally hardlink the episode to the appropriate folder/season location and that’s when Plex is supposed to notice it.
\Downloads includes the following .plexignore:
*
*.*
./*
This wasn’t a big issue and I would occasionally turn it on to see if it was working right, then turn it off when it didn’t.
But this time PMS recognized a bunch of random shows from the hardlinked locations and attached them into a show called “Download” with 5 seasons of random shows I watch.
This was a real PITA to undo. And in my frustration of having to undo it I decided to re-report that…
Automatic Scan ignores .plexignore
Because it really does.
So my solution was to finally follow OttoKerner’s advice and move my Downloads folder out of my TV folder, but I still insist that it should work as described and ignore the files & folders in .plexignore.
That should work but only if the file is actually in “Downloads”. If it is generating folders and putting the files into the folder, then it won’t be ignored.
