I’m still testing this theory (by playing back the Big Short) but I think I figured out the problem, but as a suggestion at the moment until I can confirm this is right. I think my disk where my / was too small to store thumbnails and transcode files. I had allocated 10 GB for the / disk and noticed that it was too small, filling up to 90%. So I allocated 20 GB, and it turns out, that was too small too. So I’ve got 200GB’s allocated (which may be too much, but I couldn’t find any information on the recommended disk size for Plex on Linux) and so far, there’s been no playback issues yet. So I’m wondering if that could be the problem?
As an update, I’m seeing it holding steady at 17 GB.
Consider creating a directory /home/plexdir (where you usually have the most space on all Linux distributions by default) and relocate PMS’s Library to there.
It’s a relatively simple sequence. I’ve documented it here in the Linux Tips section. It might save you some headaches in the future.
I may need to rebuild the VM to do what you suggest, solely to have an extra disk to allocate the moved Library files to. Which I am inclined to do. I’m still seeing the error pop up though. So I’m not sure if it’s just an issue with capacity, or if there is still a transcode issue I am sorting through. I’m doing more tests.
To save you some time if you do the rebuild, with PMS stopped, create a Tarball of ./Library. No sense in downloading all that again if you don’t have to
So to provide an update on this, and offer up more context, I have the following to add:
Since the space issue looked to be part of the problem, I went about rebuilding the server and plex instance, taking in some of the advice ChuckPA provided.
I installed the VM on its own zvol, and created a separate zvol for the plex Library data.
I configured the service override for plex to move Library data to the second zvol. This kept my system volume to a healthy 2.2 GB, and my 20GB plex data volume roughly 50% full as it indexes and creates thumbnails. I can expand this volume as needs permit.
I am still seeing playback issues on the same video in the Chrome app player, but no such issues in the Plex website player, or the Plex Windows app. Things are pretty fine there, although the Plex Windows app appears to stutter, which is a known issue.
So all in all, I think the VM instance is an success, and it looks pretty stable. Thank you ChuckPA for your help and advice.
