My Plex Docker container is on the “public” update channel. However, it seems that whenever there are Plex updates on the “beta” update channel or even, I assume, internal builds the Docker image gets a fresh build to “force” a Plex update. Why can’t the “public” Docker image only get updated when there is actually a new Plex version available on that update channel rather than when there is any update on any of the update channels?
what makes you think the release cylces of the Docker-Images are bound to the release cycles of PMS?
What actualy triggers your Container update? Watchtower?
I’m running on unRAID. It automatically checks every night. I’ve noticed that updates coincide with new versions on the public or beta channels but there are a bunch more that occur between those.
It doesn’t appear to be for security updates since only the last couple sub-images are changed. If it was for security updates nearly the whole thing would be updated. The only purpose would be to force the container to re-download PMS since it would need to after an image update.
I understand the reasoning for doing this but forcing this on the public channel for each non-public release is unnecessary and kind of annoying.
Actualy, beta/plexpass and public require no Image updates at all as they automaticly update plex on every container (re)start.
The last change on https://github.com/plexinc/pms-docker was on March 22nd. So there was no reason for an image update (oberservation: the Dockerfile on Dockerhub is outdated compared to github). The image builds are done autoside Dockerhub’s auto build chain. So probably you are right about a CI Job triggering Image builds and performing unnecessary image updates. The might have CI Jobs that fire up other CI Jobs responsible for the image updates.
What realy is disturbing is that a bunch of images are pushed for the same tag on the same day within a couple of minutes. On those days my watchtower logs show a couple of image pulls and container updates for the same tag.
Yeah, I assume they change a parameter in the build in order to force a container restart, which forces an update. I do something similar on one of my own Dockers but I use the parameter change to indicate an internal change.
@kopfpilot said:
The last change on GitHub - plexinc/pms-docker: Plex Media Server Docker repo, for all your PMS docker needs. was on March 22nd. So there was no reason for an image update
Unless the base image or any installed package is updated. Then that’s a very valid reason to update the image:
What realy is disturbing is that a bunch of images are pushed for the same tag on the same day within a couple of minutes. On those days my watchtower logs show a couple of image pulls and container updates for the same tag.
Again, if the base image or any package is updated, since they are all built from the same Dockerfile with different build args, they would all be updated.
@gbooker02 said:
Again, if the base image or any package is updated, since they are all built from the same Dockerfile with different build args, they would all be updated.
I received yet another update this morning that just re-installed the latest public version. All this is rather annoying.
Since there’s no build script included in the Github repository I assume they have an automated build process they use internally. It seems this build process updates the docker image. However, every time they create a new build whether it is public, beta, or internal each image tag gets updated whether or not it’s really necessary.
… each image tag gets updated whether or not it’s really necessary.
That’s not how docker works. It follows a set of steps which accomplish changes to the image to create the next layer. If two runs accomplish the same set of changes, the image will be the same across the two runs. If an image is built and pushed, but the resulting repository (docker hub) already has the same image, nothing happens.
You are seeing changes because the base image or a package is different (updated). So, the tag change is necessary because something has been updated since the last run.
Thanks for the insight gbooker02.
I didn’t consider the updates of the base image, caused by package updates.
On a baremetal or vm people would apply latest updates as well.
The base package isn’t being updated it’s only the last few lines that are affected by these updates. It appears to be the the URL argument that they’re changing.
The base package isn’t being updated it’s only the last few lines that are affected by these updates. It appears to be the the URL argument that they’re changing.
No, we don’t ever set the URL build argument. It’s only there in case the user wishes to use it to build their own docker images (such as forum betas and the like). Look, the command that builds the public image is nothing more than exactly what you would expect: docker build --build-arg TAG=public -t plexinc/pms-docker:public . (from within a checkout of the pms-docker repository). Try it yourself and you’ll get the same images we push.
That doesn’t explain why I’m seeing several updates per week that only affect the last few sub-images. The only thing that would explain that would be changes to the files in /root that aren’t being reflected in the Github repository.
There’s at least 2 updates just today.
Now it’s up to 3 today. Kind of feels like this is out of spite. 
I’ve the same problem. Every day a bunch of updates. 
Still getting several image updates but now they are just the very last sub-image.
Guys,
I have recently moved to the Docker Plex server from running on a Linux box. I am wondering whether the fresh Docker images are because whenever there is an update each image is pushed, but the changes are occurring because of Ubuntu updates that then triggers a change in the image?
At the moment I haven’t decided whether I will stick with the public/plexpass tags or move to latest because if the images are updating frequently it may be best for me to do a regular Docker pull in which case there isn’t much point of me using the images that auto update.
Andrew.
This issue has apparently been resolved. The way too frequent updates stopped shortly after my last post.
Also, the “plexpass” tag has been deprecated. It’s now either “public” or “beta”. The images themselves don’t need updated with new versions. When you see a notification in the web ui that there’s a new version available you just need to restart the container and it will download the new version. I’ve been switching between the two. If there’s a feature in the beta channel I desire I’ll switch to it until it becomes public. But otherwise I stick with the public channel.
