Deleted Folders Still Show Up

General Discussions
1

I’m at my wits’ end with this issue, so bear with me. I’ve tried searching up and down the googles for a solution but nothing I’ve tried has worked. Here’s the situation:

Background info:
OS: Debian 8.8 Jessie
Plex Media Server: 1.5.5.3634 (through official Ubuntu repo, with which Debian 8 is compatible)

I moved a folder with a TV show (the anime series K-On!) and the two seasons it has inside into my TV Shows library.
/[TV Shows library]/K-On!/Anime/Season 1/[Episodes here]
/[TV Shows library]/K-On!/Anime/Season 2/[Episodes here]

However, when Plex scanned it, it recognized as one season only with two versions of episodes 1-14 (of which both seasons have those numbers) and one version of episodes 15-26 (since only S2 has those episode numbers). I assumed that Plex saw the ‘Anime’ folder and treated all the episodes inside as belonging to one season. Well, I had dealt with similar issue before, so I put some .plexignore files inside the episode folders to ignore everything
/[TV Shows library]/K-On!/Anime/Season 1/.plexignore => *
/[TV Shows library]/K-On!/Anime/Season 2/.plexignore => *
then symlinked the episodes to new folders created in the ‘K-On!’ folder.
/[TV Shows library]/K-On!/season 1/[Symlinked episodes]
/[TV Shows library]/K-On!/season 2/[Symlinked episodes]
This has worked for other shows before, so I had reason to believe that this would work. However… it didn’t. Still same issue, Plex scanned as one season when I manually hit scan.

At this point, I noticed that under ‘Folder View’, Plex still showed the episodes as under the ‘Anime’ folder, while nothing was showing up under the folders supposedly full of symlinks. This is after a manual library scan. I then moved the ‘K-On!’ folder from the ‘TV Shows’ library to elsewhere, thinking it’ll make Plex delete the entry for the show and I’ll retry.

Even with nothing referencing ‘K-On!’ inside the library, Plex still kept the show entry around, with media info showing ‘file not available’. It was at this point that I tried googling for solutions.

  • The first thing I tried was to delete the ‘K-On!’ entry using the ‘delete media’ function. The show deleted just fine, but when I went to folder view, the ghost folders still existed. Furthermore, when I moved the K-On! folder back into the ‘TV Shows’ library, Plex refused to re-populate the show into the library.
  • I then tried ‘Clean Bundles’ and ‘Optimize Database’: no change
  • I tried to wait for an automatic scan instead of hitting ‘scan’ manually, nothing changed.

At this point, I’m left with some ghost folders with nothing inside them in ‘Folder View’ as well as Plex refusing to acknowledge the existence of the media files entirely if I move them back in. Any ideas?

2

@lau.hayden said:
/[TV Shows library]/K-On!/Anime/Season 1/[Episodes here]

I cannot tell you anything about symlinks, but if you do it that complicated, there must be issues eventually.

Arbitrary folders are not possible in a tv show library.
If your tv show points to
/[TV Shows library]/
then the folder Anime is the sand in the Plex gearbox.

Here is how it’s supposed to be:
/[TV Shows library]/K-On!/Season 01/K-On! - s01e01.mp4
/[TV Shows library]/K-On!/Season 01/K-On! - s01e02 - Instruments.mp4
If you do it that way, there won’t be any need for first ignoring files with .plexignore and then later re-introduce them with symlinks.
see https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200220687-Naming-Series-Season-Based-TV-Shows

Difficulties with removing items from the library are usually caused by completely removing folders which the library “watches”.
I’d first “edit” the anime library and look at the ‘Add folders’ tab. To which folders does the library point to? Are all of these still in existence?

3

My Plex setup watches the folder /[TV Shows library]/ and not the /[TV Shows library]/K-On!/ folder directly. Editing the library only shows that one folder, which is correct.

Hm, Plex has been smart enough to deal with my funky folders so far, but I guess I need to clean them up. Anyway, onwards with this current problem…

4

@lau.hayden said:
My Plex setup watches the folder /[TV Shows library]/ and not the /[TV Shows library]/K-On!/ folder directly.

Yes, I assumed as much.

Hm, Plex has been smart enough to deal with my funky folders so far, but I guess I need to clean them up.

Non-standard naming schemas can work at first quite well, but will eventually fail as the library grows.
Just the exact point in time when they fail varies a bit.

5

Okay, so I guess the recommended solution is to rebuild my library with proper the proper naming scheme and re-scan it. Been avoiding that, but oh well.

6

@lau.hayden said:
Okay, so I guess the recommended solution is to rebuild my library with proper the proper naming scheme and re-scan it. Been avoiding that, but oh well.

Take a look at Filebot. It’ll take the “sting” out of it.

7

Take a look at Filebot. It’ll take the “sting” out of it.

I was just looking at that, thanks. I see there are .deb packages available - do those require a GUI? I’m running my server headless, so I would need a CLI version.

8

Never mind, found the answer myself. For posterity:
https://www.filebot.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1380

9

I need help. Yes, me…
I’ve experienced this issue before and deleting shows usually updates before I can even open Plex. My problem now is; when I move a folder, movie, or tv show, Plex doesn’t want to acknowledge that they have been moved. I now have ghost folders, tv shows, and movies.

Here is how the problem started:
I had 4 external hard drives. I added 2 more. The 2 that I added were completely full with movies, tv shows, and music. My ex girlfriend had these two hard drives and finally gave them back. So, since I didn’t ever expect to see these again, I added a lot of the movies back. So I have been dealing with doubles. I delete the doubles and some work, some do not. I delete a folder or file, update the library, and it’s still there. I deleted the whole folder, it’s still there. I remove the folder from the library list, it’s still there. I clean bundles, empty trash, it’s still there. I have no clue what is happening because before I added these two hard drives, I could delete a double and it would disappear in about 2 seconds. What am I missing?

I’m going to add a second question because I am already here. All movies and tv shows become pixelated every couple of minutes. This has not been tested on any player except my tv. It may be a problem with the tv. I’m not sure what is causing that, but before adding the two hard drives, it did not do that.

I appreciate any help you can provide. Here is an example of the first question;

Library:
D:\Tv Shows\name of tv show\season 1
E:\Tv Shows\name of tv show\season 1
F:\Tv Shows\name of tv show\season 1

Imagine D and F have the same show. It causes a double for every episode. I remove the whole folder for a specific tv show from D.
I update, clean bundles, empty trash, update again, clean bundles again, empty trash. It’s still there. Imagine the same scenario, but I delete the whole Tv shows folder. Follow the same steps, except I edit the library, removing that folder first. It’s still in my Plex library. 3 days I have been trying to fix this. Help please

10

Edit your library
go to the ‘Add Folders’ tab
verify that each folder path in there is still:

  • valid
  • existing
  • accessible by Plex Server (permissions)
  • not completely empty

Do also check the integrity of your Plex database:

  1. activate debug logging (not ‘verbose’!)
  2. quit Plex Server
  3. wait 1 minute
  4. start Plex Server
  5. wait 5 minutes
  6. fetch log files and attach them here

Or inspect them yourself. Take a look at the Plex Media Server.log file and seek for messages about database corrupt or malformed.
If you find these, you may have to repair your database.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201100678-repair-a-corrupt-database/