Crashing Server

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Server Version#: Debian 9.8.0
Player Version#: plexmediaserver_1.15.3.876

I have been running Plex media server on an ESXi VM under Ubuntu 18.04 for months with no problems. Last night the server started freezing and ESXi showed a constant cpu load of 60%. I could only get the server up and running by hard resetting it several times. Today I built a new VM with Debian 9.8 and installed the latest Plex Media Server 1.15.3. OPnce I installed the package the server crashed with a cpu load of 70% - this was before I added any library information. None of my other VMs are experiencing issues - though I am not ruling out hardware, but as this started happening with recent updates to Ubuntu and Plex, I am suspicious. Unfortunately, all I can find in the logs in non-ASCII data prior to the crash: ^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@
^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@

Any thoughts or help would be appreciated - as I said, everything was running stably for months until some recent upgrades.

2

Hey I get the same issue, I tried setting up another VM to see how it behaves and I still get a Plex server that can’t start.

I tried with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Arch Linux (with version 1.15.3.876)

3

That’s a Ubuntu/Debian kernel bug. We’ve seen it many times.

The ethernet adapter emulation used in the VM isn’t compatible with the driver the kernel detects.
The other cause was LRO being enabled.

The last widespread occurrence of this was the VMNET3 adapter, with LRO enabled for a Ubuntu guest.

The resolution was to
a) Change adapter emulation to e1000e
b) Disable Large Receive Offload (LRO)

4

i had the same recently, that was with a baremetal hetzner threadripper… luckily, they swapped hardware and hasnt come back.

5

Thanks for the tip - I have disabled LRO on the guest interface and am currently monitoring. So far, things seem stable… It’s just odd this started recently. Am currently running kernal 4.15.0-47 for anyone having a similar issue.

Again, Thank You for the Help

6

You’re welcome.

The issue isn’t server version specific. It is a simple LRO buffer pointer overflow as it receives traffic from clients / NAS boxes holding the media.

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