Server Version#:1.15.3.835
Player Version#:3.13.13
I have plex running on a linux virtual machine with storage on a Synology DS via NFS and I am playing video from a plex app native on a Vizio smart tv.
I can play a movie and it may play for 5 minutes or for 90 minutes, the timing is variable. But eventually I’ll get an error saying there was an error playing the video. When I go back a screen and try to play the movie again, I see a tag indicating the media is “unavailable”.
I can get on the plex console and navigate to the directory where the media file exists, and I can see the file. I can confirm appropriate permissions on the file. If I restart the plex media service, the file is still unavailable. However, if I reboot the CentOS machine, then things return to normal.
I’ve been running this configuration for 3 years now and this problem just started in the last 3 to 4 months and has become increasingly annoying.
When I look in PMS.log I see things like
Apr 06, 2019 23:05:22.053 [0x7f67d2ffd700] ERROR - Error opening file ‘"/volume1/htpc/Movies/Movie Name/Movie Name.mkv"’ - Permission denied (13)
Apr 06, 2019 23:05:22.053 [0x7f67d2ffd700] ERROR - Failed to open file for streaming: /volume1/htpc/Movies/Movie Name/Movie Name.mkv"
But undeniably, permissions are not denied.
I do stay up to date on my Synology DS updates, linux updates, and plex updates. Seems like I am updating something at least every other week.
When i do a ll I see in that folder:
-rwxrwxrwx. 2 deluge MediaServices 2000860984 Apr 10 17:47 S01E08 - episode.mkv
My plex user is of course a member of the MediaServices group.
I did a “chown plex:MediaServices S01E08*” and immediately plex started working again. That makes me this this is not a plex issue at all, which I kinda expected already. Rather that makes it look like the session running plex forgot that it was running under a user account that is a member of MediaServices. I dont know what to make of that, but again, any input is much appreciated.
You are correct.
/volume1 is a synology nfs export and the centos machine is mounting /volume1/htpc.
What you are saying makes perfect sense. I’m not an nfs expert so I’ll start researching along those lines. my fstab entry looks like:
172.16.x.x:/volume1/htpc /volume1/htpc nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr
I was all excited to try it out so after making the changes I played a mkv and within 8 minutes:
An error occurred reading the file: /volume1/htpc/Movies/movie/movie.mkv (5).
Apr 12, 2019 12:37:14.048 [0x7fcfad7fa700] ERROR - Error opening file ‘"/volume1/htpc/Movies/movie/movie.mkv"’ - Permission denied (13)
Apr 12, 2019 12:37:14.048 [0x7fcfad7fa700] ERROR - Failed to open file for streaming: /volume1/htpc/Movies/movie/movie.mkv
I did not look at utilization at the time. Nor did I restart boxes but I did unmount and remount. Will do some more testing, again I appreciate the guidance!
I also found that on my Synology I had 2 NICs configured in a lacp LAG but only 1 was connected, and the switch was not configured for LAG. So Im kinda intruiged that it was working at all. So I went ahead and configured the 2nd switch port, and I am doing some additional testing. Right off I can tell after the nfs settings you suggested, and fixing the jacked up network ports, I am setting the best performance and quality I have ever seen before. I guess that is the silver lining.
After the 1 permissions error, I rebooted the plex host and have not seen another error since. I have all weekend to test.
With the Syno configured for trunking but not the switch, it would periodically retry. That would knock off the service while it retried and most likely root cause of the symptoms you were seeing.
Good you caught it.
I hope you like the performance tweak. It’s my standard.
Had some rather bizarre results in testing and I’m not sure how to go about troubleshooting this.
Was playing a move and got the error saying there was a problem playing the movie. Plex reported the file as being “unavailable”.
I verified the file was on disk.
I had plex rescan the file system and the movie disappeared.
I then copied the file and just appended a (2) at the end of the filename, before the .mkv extension.
I then rescanned the file system again and plex found 2 instances of that movie.
I then deleted the file with the (2) in it and had plex rescan files again. As you might expect the 2nd copy of that movie disappeared and plex only saw 1 copy of that movie and I was then able to play it just fine.
