Server Version#: 1.23.5.4862-0f739d462
Player Version#: various
Server OS: Ubuntu 20.04 5.4.0-1041-raspi
Plex Media Server Logs_2021-07-31_19-28-49.zip (4.2 MB)
I have been using PMS on a Raspberry Pi 4 (4gb) for about 2 years now, no problems at all until the last week or so.
My primary device is a 2nd gen Fire TV but in troubleshooting I’ve used the web app and the iOS app on my iPhone 12.
For the last week or so I have experienced buffering quite often but for no obvious reason- the Pi and the Fire TV are connected via ethernet, they’re connected directly, it’s direct play, no transcoding, no system load that I can find. I do not get the message that your connection to the server is too slow, I just get a spinning circle for 30-60 seconds, every 2-3 minutes.
During this time the UI was fast enough (normal speed as compared to before) but now for the last 2 days the UI (on Fire TV, web, iOS) is unbearably slow and stopped loading videos at all.
I run (and have always run) other services on the RPi (smb & qbittorrent primarily) and they work completely normally.
The RPi runs Ubuntu off of a 16gb SD card and the media is on a 5tb external HDD. I have bind mounted /var/lib/plexmediaserver to a folder on the external HDD. The HDD is connected via USB 3 with a splitter cable to give it extra power.
I first suspected the sd card was going out so the first troubleshooting step I did was move the installation to a USB 3 drive (different from the media drive) but no change so the sd card was moved back into place
Then I suspected that a second HDD I had connected (which only held the Plex database) might be going bad so I moved the database onto the 5tb disk & removed the second HDD, but no change.
Then I suspected that my media was streaming at too high bitrate for the FTV to handle (100mb ethernet) so I reencoded to a lower bitrate. I thought this was the solution for a couple hours but a short while later the UI started acting up on me and started being completely unresponsive. I also tried wifi on the FTV (faster than ethernet) but that didn’t make any difference.
At this point bc no other service on the RPi is showing issues I suspect the PMS itself, but the only change I made to the server (after issues started appearing) was I enabled database backup to a remote location (a drive mounted over sshfs on a remote server). QBT & SMB both also use the 5tb drive with normal performance. I believe I did an update to the PMS version but again after issues appeared.
Any help is appreciated.
Edit: updated PMS to Version 1.23.6.4881, no change
