With the introduction of the new downloads feature, all downloads that require transcoding of any kind are stored in the ’’Transcoder temporary directory‘’’path set inside plex settings.
For those using ram as their transcoding path, either through a ramdisk or by using /tmp or /dev/shm, this can cause issues when multiple downloads are started and the client is remote and the upload is slow or the amount of ram available is low, it will cause the plex instance to crash due to out of memory issues on the host machine.
For example, when attempting to download 5 x 10GB movies at 1080p 10Mbps with the transcode path mapped to /dev/shm (half your ram), plex’s new download feature will not delete the transcoded movies waiting to be synced until the client has completely downloaded the synced content. This can cause your transcode folder to fill up and you will get a ‘not enough storage’ error appear as the transcode folder no longer has space to convert further downloads, or future real time transcodes.
A solution to this would be to allow users to map the downloads requiring transcoding to a seperate area, and keep the temporary transcode folder path purely for real time streams which auto clean themselves up based on the transcoder default throttle buffer length.
This needs to be looked at and sorted out! I’ve had this issue recently where a users mobile device is downloading content, but then re-downloads it again! Filling my ramdisk.
It seems to be a fault of the mobile device (probably too full or something), but it’s wrecking my PMS.
Either, have transcoding made in the transcode folder, but then move the new file to a “to be downloaded” folder (of our choosing). Or, allow us to set a dedicated folder for transcoded downloads.
Also, though off topic, brining back the ability to manage “download” (aka Sync) from within PMS would help me “fix” this issue for a remote user!
I thought of this too late to post in the Fireside chat, but I read through that and I know there is some activity planned around Downloads, this would be an excellent addition to that work @McWanke
Thanks @Disgustipated for the callout here! We are working on downloads as per the comments in the Fireside. The first phase is already in progress and won’t address this request, but it is a good callout for future phases of this work.
This has to be such a trivial fix, adding one new setting and changing the variable on a few lines of code. Even if there are longer-term plans to fix this a better way, it can’t be worth breaking this feature for anyone who uses a ramdisk for years on end.
it’s not often I go into the plex settings anymore, after using it for more than 10 years I’m pleasantly suprised this feature I suggested 3 years ago was finally implemented! I completely missed it after 2 months of release.
