# Constant buffering
**URL:** https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383
**Category:** Plex Media Server
**Tags:** server-linux
**Created:** [February 3, 2022, 1:12am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383 "2022-02-03T01:12:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Treverr](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Treverr)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 1:12am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/1 "2022-02-03T01:12:33Z")
Server Version#: 1.25.5.5492
Player Version#: 7.27
Recently I have noticed that my clients are buffering a ton. Although there have not really been any changes on the server side. My clients seem to get a message that their connection to the server isnt fast enough, even when on the same LAN over a gigabit connection. So im not sure what the issue is but i don’t think its network related.
I do see a lot of “WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 300.000000 ms to retrieve 1 items.” messages. But I don’t know why that would be. The linux machine has a WD Black that, when I have tested it, can read at more than 3GB/s
Would the slow query be the reason for the constant buffering? How can I debug this?
[Plex Media Server Logs\_2022-02-03\_01-08-43.zip](https://forums.plex.tv/uploads/short-url/eOytimaO1yMs6aZQI7jcrzo3XZu.zip) (2.9 MB)
---
### Author:  [@power](https://forums.plex.tv/u/power)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 1:38am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/2 "2022-02-03T01:38:30Z")
web has an issue at the moment with excessive buffering. have not heard of it being fixed yet.
---
### Author:  [@Treverr](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Treverr)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 1:54am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/3 "2022-02-03T01:54:50Z")
This tends to be on Apple TV client that I use most often and has been going on for at least a couple weeks.
---
### Author:  [@Treverr](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Treverr)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 2:23am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/4 "2022-02-03T02:23:17Z")
@ChuckPa could you please take a look? It is so bad it’s making the sever borderline impossible to use. I haven’t been able to figure out any issue on my own so any advice would be very much appreciated 🙏
---
### Author:  [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 3:00am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/5 "2022-02-03T03:00:47Z")
1. Breathe 🙂 I was going to make my evening rounds.
2. A little bit confusing of a host/container config regarding the media, please detail?
– Debian host?
– Docker container?
– Mac-like `/Volumes` local file mount points?
3. Playing media and ran off the end indicates the Analysis was not up to date.
– Either played new media before being completed initially
-or-
– Media updated (replaced a different file of lesser bit rate / run length / smaller file.)
```auto
Feb 03, 2022 00:55:00.888 [0x7f59f0dd4b38] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity 2c7c50ce-26bd-4731-bcef-cee49b3dde56 - completed 66.4% - Media download by cupp.sandra@yahoo.com
Feb 03, 2022 00:55:00.935 [0x7f59f0dd4b38] DEBUG - Using X-Forwarded-For: 2600:1700:2f70:a30f:9de1:b829:6966:93a0 as remote address
Feb 03, 2022 00:55:00.935 [0x7f59e514ab38] DEBUG - Request: [172.20.0.1:39670 (WAN)] GET /statistics/bandwidth?timespan=6 (22 live) GZIP Signed-in Token (Treverr)
Feb 03, 2022 00:55:00.942 [0x7f59f0dd4b38] DEBUG - Completed: [172.20.0.1:39670] 200 GET /statistics/bandwidth?timespan=6 (22 live) GZIP 6ms 5193 bytes (pipelined: 550)
Feb 03, 2022 00:55:00.964 [0x7f59f0dd4b38] DEBUG - Using X-Forwarded-For: 2607:1c80:54:1:545a:af2e:ff72:c8e6 as remote address
Feb 03, 2022 00:55:00.964 [0x7f59e52bfb38] DEBUG - Request: [172.20.0.1:39670 (WAN)] GET /video/:/transcode/universal/session/1DDE600A-AC56-49B0-9199-A29F8FBFF679/base/00987.ts (22 live) GZIP Signed-in
Feb 03, 2022 00:55:00.964 [0x7f59e52bfb38] DEBUG - [Transcode/1DDE600A-AC56-49B0-9199-A29F8FBFF679] Asked for segment 987 from session.
Feb 03, 2022 00:55:00.964 [0x7f59e52bfb38] WARN - [Transcode/1DDE600A-AC56-49B0-9199-A29F8FBFF679] Transcode runner appears to have died.
Feb 03, 2022 00:55:01.035 [0x7f59f0dd4b38] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity a532ad30-c49e-48a2-a823-65c6b66b0688 - completed 95.0% - Media download by cupp.sandra@yahoo.com
Feb 03, 2022 00:55:01.064 [0x7f59e52bfb38] DEBUG - [Transcode/1DDE600A-AC56-49B0-9199-A29F8FBFF679] Sending back blank segment for 987, we overestimated the number of segments.
Feb 03, 2022 00:55:01.064 [0x7f59e52bfb38] DEBUG - [Transcode/1DDE600A-AC56-49B0-9199-A29F8FBFF679] Returning segment 987 from session
Feb 03, 2022 00:55:01.064 [0x7f59e52bfb38] DEBUG - Content-Length of /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Resources/empty.ts is 188 (of total: 188).
Feb 03, 2022 00:55:01.064 [0x7f59e5e83b38] DEBUG - [Transcode/1DDE600A-AC56-49B0-9199-A29F8FBFF679] Streaming Resource: Estimated bandwidth for 4B1DA50E-17C8-4006-8446-23B7D8CBFDFD to be 8kbps over 2.64s
```
1. Slow query -
– fragmented DB
– Busy DB (remember, media analysis / scanning is a hard hitter on the DB which is single-threaded access.
– When is the last it was defragmented (optimized) ?
– Physically , how large is com.plexapp.plugins.library.db, as well as its -wal and -shm ?
– How much media, in total, is indexed (item count) ?
---
### Author:  [@Treverr](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Treverr)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 3:15am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/6 "2022-02-03T03:15:54Z")
> [@ChuckPa](#):
>
> 1. Breathe 🙂 I was going to make my evening rounds.
Thank you!
> [@ChuckPa](#):
>
> 1. A little bit confusing of a host/container config regarding the media, please detail?
> – Debian host?
> – Docker container?
> – Mac-like `/Volumes` local file mount points?
I moved this over from a Mac a while back and just kept the same mount points when I reconfigured it. This is running in the PMS docker.
```auto
version: "3.8"
services:
plexmediaserver:
image: plexinc/pms-docker:plexpass
container_name: plexmediaserver
restart: always
ports:
- "32400:32400"
volumes:
- /Volumes/All Media:/Volumes/All Media
- ./data/plexmediaserver:/config
- /dev/shm:/transcode
environment:
- TZ=America\Los_Angeles
- PLEX_CLAIM=claim-xxx
- NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES=compute,video,utility
- NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all
- CUDA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES=compute,video,utility
runtime: nvidia
pid: host
```
> [@ChuckPa](#):
>
> 1. Playing media and ran off the end indicates the Analysis was not up to date.
> – Either played new media before being completed initially
> -or-
> – Media updated (replaced a different file of lesser bit rate / run length / smaller file.)
>
> ```auto
> Feb 03, 2022 00:55:00.888 [0x7f59f0dd4b38] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity 2c7c50ce-26bd-4731-bcef-cee49b3dde56 - completed 66.4% - Media download by cupp.sandra@yahoo.com
> Feb 03, 2022 00:55:00.935 [0x7f59f0dd4b38] DEBUG - Using X-Forwarded-For: 2600:1700:2f70:a30f:9de1:b829:6966:93a0 as remote address
> Feb 03, 2022 00:55:00.935 [0x7f59e514ab38] DEBUG - Request: [172.20.0.1:39670 (WAN)] GET /statistics/bandwidth?timespan=6 (22 live) GZIP Signed-in Token (Treverr)
> Feb 03, 2022 00:55:00.942 [0x7f59f0dd4b38] DEBUG - Completed: [172.20.0.1:39670] 200 GET /statistics/bandwidth?timespan=6 (22 live) GZIP 6ms 5193 bytes (pipelined: 550)
> Feb 03, 2022 00:55:00.964 [0x7f59f0dd4b38] DEBUG - Using X-Forwarded-For: 2607:1c80:54:1:545a:af2e:ff72:c8e6 as remote address
> Feb 03, 2022 00:55:00.964 [0x7f59e52bfb38] DEBUG - Request: [172.20.0.1:39670 (WAN)] GET /video/:/transcode/universal/session/1DDE600A-AC56-49B0-9199-A29F8FBFF679/base/00987.ts (22 live) GZIP Signed-in
> Feb 03, 2022 00:55:00.964 [0x7f59e52bfb38] DEBUG - [Transcode/1DDE600A-AC56-49B0-9199-A29F8FBFF679] Asked for segment 987 from session.
> Feb 03, 2022 00:55:00.964 [0x7f59e52bfb38] WARN - [Transcode/1DDE600A-AC56-49B0-9199-A29F8FBFF679] Transcode runner appears to have died.
> Feb 03, 2022 00:55:01.035 [0x7f59f0dd4b38] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity a532ad30-c49e-48a2-a823-65c6b66b0688 - completed 95.0% - Media download by cupp.sandra@yahoo.com
> Feb 03, 2022 00:55:01.064 [0x7f59e52bfb38] DEBUG - [Transcode/1DDE600A-AC56-49B0-9199-A29F8FBFF679] Sending back blank segment for 987, we overestimated the number of segments.
> Feb 03, 2022 00:55:01.064 [0x7f59e52bfb38] DEBUG - [Transcode/1DDE600A-AC56-49B0-9199-A29F8FBFF679] Returning segment 987 from session
> Feb 03, 2022 00:55:01.064 [0x7f59e52bfb38] DEBUG - Content-Length of /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Resources/empty.ts is 188 (of total: 188).
> Feb 03, 2022 00:55:01.064 [0x7f59e5e83b38] DEBUG - [Transcode/1DDE600A-AC56-49B0-9199-A29F8FBFF679] Streaming Resource: Estimated bandwidth for 4B1DA50E-17C8-4006-8446-23B7D8CBFDFD to be 8kbps over 2.64s
>
> ```
These files have been around for a while, nothing too new. I think it definitely should have been up to date.
> [@ChuckPa](#):
>
> 1. Slow query -
> – fragmented DB
> – Busy DB (remember, media analysis / scanning is a hard hitter on the DB which is single-threaded access.
> – When is the last it was defragmented (optimized) ?
> – Physically , how large is com.plexapp.plugins.library.
I optimized it today and I have it set to do that as part of maintenance. FWIW.
I checked and there wasn’t any other analysis / scanning activity that I saw. I can reproduce this again pretty frequently with more logs if that helps.
```auto
(Outside the docker container)
-rwxrwxr-x 1 trever trever 339M Feb 2 19:11 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db
(Inside the docker container)
-rwxrwxr-x 1 plex plex 339M Feb 3 03:23 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db
```
Thanks again!
---
### Author:  [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 4:13am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/7 "2022-02-03T04:13:50Z")
The DB size is fine. A size less than 500 MB is normal and best.
This leads me to believe you have an i/o bottleneck somewhere.
First step is to verify there is I/O wait.
In a new terminal window, (size it to fit all devices)
```auto
sudo watch -n 1 iostat -m
```
Now perform a playback
You want to look at these values:
```auto
avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle
0.08 0.00 3.06 2.49 0.00 94.37
```
This is my Xeon E5 NAS performing a RAID5 → RAID 6 volume reshaping so it’s clearly I/O bound.
You should not have wait times this high. Fractions of 1% is best.
%user will be based on processing load but remember, 100%/cpu core – see what’s bottlenecking. Are you jamming up on a single -threaded core operation?
%system - overhead getting your media and managing the i/o . needs to be low
%iowait - This will likely be high … which is why the SLOW QUERY (disk i/o jammed up)
---
### Author:  [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 4:18am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/8 "2022-02-03T04:18:59Z")
Afterthought —
Where is `./data` ? Normally that’s a full path Is this on the root file system?
---
### Author:  [@Treverr](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Treverr)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 4:21am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/9 "2022-02-03T04:21:27Z")
Hmm yeah I did notice that looked high…
```auto
Every 1.0s: iostat -m server: Wed Feb 2 20:15:41 2022
Linux 5.13.0-27-generic (server) 02/02/2022 _x86_64_ (24 CPU)
avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle
2.83 0.47 2.33 37.10 0.00 57.27
Device tps MB_read/s MB_wrtn/s MB_dscd/s MB_read MB_wrtn MB_dscd
loop0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 0
loop1 0.02 0.00 0.00 0.00 10 0 0
loop10 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1 0 0
loop11 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 0
loop12 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1 0 0
loop13 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1 0 0
loop14 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1 0 0
loop15 0.26 0.01 0.00 0.00 149 0 0
loop16 0.02 0.00 0.00 0.00 5 0 0
loop17 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1 0 0
loop18 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 0
loop2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 0
loop3 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 0
loop4 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 0
loop5 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 0
loop6 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 0
loop7 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 0
loop8 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1 0 0
loop9 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0 0
nvme0n1 290.34 1.50 2.71 0.00 24323 43788 0
sda 0.08 0.00 0.00 0.00 8 0 0
sdb 117.35 15.79 3.13 0.00 255265 50554 0
sdc 6.83 0.69 0.00 0.00 11137 2 0
sdd 42.98 4.95 3.39 0.00 79958 54726 0
sde 20.74 2.80 0.00 0.00 45319 1 0
sdf 2.81 0.25 0.00 0.00 4053 1 0
sdg 10.28 0.06 0.75 0.00 935 12103 0
sdh 0.21 0.01 0.00 0.00 84 0 0
```
The slow query comes from the DB location correct? Thats on `nvme0n1` which is a WD Black NVMe drive so I am surprised thats what would be jamming it up but maybe there is something underlying causing this.
---
### Author:  [@Treverr](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Treverr)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 4:22am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/10 "2022-02-03T04:22:21Z")
> [@ChuckPa](#):
>
> Where is `./data` ? Normally that’s a full path Is this on the root file system?
It is on the root drive:
```auto
/docker/plexmediaserver/data
```
---
### Author:  [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 4:22am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/11 "2022-02-03T04:22:46Z")
That is totally unacceptable (as you well know)
```auto
sudo dd if=/dev/nvme0n1 of=/dev/null bs=4M
```
That should suck it in at 2.7 GB/sec or better
---
### Author:  [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 4:24am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/12 "2022-02-03T04:24:53Z")
```auto
[chuck@lizum ~.2000]$ sudo dd if=/dev/nvme0n1 of=/dev/null bs=4M count=20000
20000+0 records in
20000+0 records out
83886080000 bytes (84 GB, 78 GiB) copied, 33.962 s, 2.5 GB/s
[chuck@lizum ~.2001]$
```
I have an idea. I think you’ll kick yourself. Let me see your results.
---
### Author:  [@Treverr](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Treverr)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 4:26am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/13 "2022-02-03T04:26:32Z")
> [@ChuckPa](#):
>
> `sudo dd if=/dev/nvme0n1 of=/dev/null bs=4M count=20000`
Here ya go:
```auto
20000+0 records in
20000+0 records out
83886080000 bytes (84 GB, 78 GiB) copied, 55.4866 s, 1.5 GB/s
```
---
### Author:  [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 4:28am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/14 "2022-02-03T04:28:14Z")
Be patient… Do NOT panic.
```auto
sudo systemctl start fstrim.service
```
It’s going to trim the SSD.
It might feel like it’s locking up… Watch the disk i/o light.
It’s going to release all the dirty file system pages back to the SSD free list so it can freely allocate versus copy/write.
---
### Author:  [@Treverr](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Treverr)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 4:30am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/15 "2022-02-03T04:30:47Z")
> [@ChuckPa](#):
>
> `sudo systemctl start fstrim.service`
Ok done! You know what… Would that also explain why I have missing GB’s of storage space… Like 500GB I couldn’t account for…?
---
### Author:  [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 4:31am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/16 "2022-02-03T04:31:44Z")
WHAT? When’s the last fsck ran?
Look in `/lost+found`.
Do you see a bunch of files ?
---
### Author:  [@Treverr](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Treverr)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 4:33am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/17 "2022-02-03T04:33:06Z")
> [@ChuckPa](#):
>
> /lost+found
No there is nothing in there, but for whatever reason I cant account for a large amount of SSD space (across 2 SSD’s when I moved from a Samsung SATA to this NVMe one)
For ref: [disk usage - Missing ~900GB of hard hard drive space - Ask Ubuntu](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1385913/missing-500gb-of-hard-hard-drive-space)
---
### Author:  [@Treverr](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Treverr)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 4:34am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/18 "2022-02-03T04:34:03Z")
> [@ChuckPa](#):
>
> WHAT? When’s the last fsck ran?
Thats a good question- might need to do so. Probably been a while, at least manually.
---
### Author:  [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 4:36am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/19 "2022-02-03T04:36:07Z")
Well,
1. Boot the rescue USB
2. take it to the shell mode
3. `fsck` all the partitions (unmounted of course)
Before doing this, what does `/etc/fstab` look like?
---
### Author:  [@Treverr](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Treverr)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2022, 4:36am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/constant-buffering/774383/20 "2022-02-03T04:36:47Z")
> [@ChuckPa](#):
>
> /etc/fstab
```auto
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
#
# / was on /dev/sdg2 during installation
UUID=33dc7666-f7ff-42ee-8f8b-71fae9db1d72 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sdg1 during installation
UUID=0425-70B4 /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 1
/swapfile none swap sw 0 0
# Mount Drives
#
UUID=e97685d9-d13d-416e-ba8b-25ebf7afce23 /Volumes/Media\0404 ext4 defaults,nofail 0 0
UUID=f062d7fd-37f1-4d73-8c0a-9d116d360c56 /Volumes/Media\0403 ext4 defaults,nofail 0 0
UUID=31c264c2-ef31-45e0-a28b-0739571f86f8 /Volumes/Media\0402 ext4 defaults,nofail 0 0
UUID=2fdf80cd-851e-42fe-a4a4-b08f5000f501 /Volumes/Media ext4 defaults,nofail 0 0
UUID=25886c7a-8df1-4cc3-be72-3201caad840d /Volumes/Storage ext4 defaults,nofail 0 0
UUID=53c6805e-5d4f-4c3a-9054-dcfd1ee82345 /Volumes/Temporary ext4 defaults,nofail 0 0
#UUID=8A52BB4D52BB3CAF /Volumes/Windows ntfs defaults,nofail 0 0
UUID=49186bbe-e0b2-4a5d-b4bb-2a88cda524a5 /Volumes/Data ext4 defaults,nofail 0 0
/Volumes/Media* /Volumes/All\040Media/ fuse.mergerfs use_ino,cache.files=off,dropcacheonclose=true,allow_other,category.create=mfs,moveonenospc=true,minfreespace=25G,fsname=/dev/allmedia 0 0
```
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