Every day Plex tries to generate chapter thumbnails for a TV show extra that I deleted a while ago. This is causing the external drive attached to my Raspberry Pi to spin up every morning. A very minor annoyance, but investigating why it was spinning up led me to find this issue.
I’ve done the Plex Dance on the show. I’ve Optimized Database and Cleaned Bundles in the Troubleshooting settings. I’ve done the automatic check/repair/optimize/reindex using ChuckPa’s DBRepair script. None of it helped.
The item (#11686 as shown in the log below) is not accessible within Plex, but it does show as an incomplete entry in Tautulli if I go to: http://127.0.0.1:8181/info?rating_key=11686
Refreshing media info in Tautulli doesn’t remove this entry, so it looks like Plex is still presenting it through the API despite the extra being deleted.
The chapter thumbnail log isn’t very informative:
Jun 20, 2025 09:02:24.847 [548545928696] INFO - Plex Media Scanner v1.41.8.9834-071366d65 - Docker Docker Container (LinuxServer.io) aarch64 - build: linux-aarch64 - GMT 01:00
Jun 20, 2025 09:02:24.848 [548545928696] INFO - Linux version: 6.12.25+rpt-rpi-v8, language: en-US
Jun 20, 2025 09:02:24.848 [548545928696] INFO - Processor: 4-core ARM Cortex-A72
Jun 20, 2025 09:02:24.848 [548545928696] INFO - /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Scanner --generate --chapter-thumbs-only --item 11686 --log-file-suffix Chapter Thumbnails
Is there anything I can do to get rid of this phantom entry and stop Plex from trying to generate chapter thumbnails for extras that don’t exist any more?
You are querying the database of Tautulli, not the one of Plex. Thus this doesn’t mean anything.
Open the plex media info XML of any item in the same library.
Now edit the address in your web browser and replace the item number immediately after .../library/metadata/ with the number from your logs.
What is shown?
So the main series is still in the library?
Is it stored in exact the same location?
Are there still local extras in there? Does the subfolder /Featurettes still exist?
So the main series is still in the library?
Yes, the series is still in the library
Is it stored in exact the same location?
Yes, it’s in the exact same location (while trying to resolve this I did the Plex Dance on the series, but it’s now back in it’s original location)
Are there still local extras in there?
No, there was only 1 extra for that show (the one in question) and it was deleted a while ago
Does the subfolder /Featurettes still exist?
No, the Featurettes subfolder was deleted along with the extra
I have tried the Plex Dance (after deleting the extra and the Featurettes subfolder) but it still has a record for the extra
Could you edit the library
go to the “Add Folders” tab
If there is more than one folder location listed there, could you double-check that they all are
Just tried refreshing metadata on the show and the record is still there
I’ve never used any .plexignore files, but I just double-checked just in case and there are none
I just did the first half of the Plex Dance (moved the show’s folder out of the library, emptied trash and cleaned bundles, but I haven’t moved the folder back into the library yet) and the record for the extra is still there
Edit 1: I just kicked off a refresh all metadata for the whole TV library, see if that changes anything
Could you please
enable server debug logging (do NOT enable verbose logging)
perform the complete Plex Dance with the whole series
fetch the mediainfo XML of the extra again
Then fetch the server logs and send them to me, together with the XML. (please ZIP beforehand)
I will file a server bug report.
The library might have originally been on the old agent - I definitely updated my libraries to the new agents at some point when it asked me to, but I can’t remember if that was on my old server or the current one.
But I definitely haven’t switched the agents since I started using the modern ones.
) and both contain hundreds of films
