Which distro and version are you using?
I have not seen this ever occur even with all the distros I test and “hard reset” the processor with.
Just had a very similar issue. I was watching a show with my wife on a firestick running the plex client and connected to my server. The server has been running for a few years, but gets rebooted for updates frequently. Last restart was about a week ago. Everything running fine since.
Then, watching a show, the screen just froze. The back and pause buttons did nothing, but hit home and went out to the home screen. Was able to run Hulu and Netflix, but Plex couldn’t connect.
So, down to the server, and check the service status, and see the “couldn’t load Preferences.xml” error. I could see that the file was there, and that the rights were good. Also could see that it was fully populated.
Tried backing out the update from last week, still getting the same error.
Then, I inspected the Preferences.xml file, and found that the e-mail address listed under PlexOnlineUsername had been garbled. It was just a series of special characters. Fired up an editor and put my correct e-mail in there, and Plex started right up.
Not sure what I am doing at this point, but it keeps taking me through the setup phase anytime I reboot. I am sure that at some point I am going to get a preferences xml error at some point
When this happens again, can you please stop plex then manually create a tar.gz of the Logs directory in there and attach it here?
@ChuckPa Please see dropbox link Dropbox - Logs.tar.xz - Simplify your life
My computer crashed and I had to reboot and the same thing happened again.
Whatever you have going on is not good.
If you look at the logs you sent me, several of the files are 0 bytes length.
Rocky Linux is not officially supported. Until you just mentioned it, I was completely unaware of the distro.
I recommend checking the ownership of all the files in /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server.
It looks like something is playing in there when it shouldn’t.
I think this looks correct?
A problem I was running into when I first started it up was that it kept asking me to go through the setup even though I already did, not sure if that is something to do with the preferences.xml file or not
See those 4096 size directories?
4096 is the default size of a disk block. This is evidence the machine crashed hard and corrupted the file system.
How much data do you have indexed and would it be difficult to start over ?
(you’d delete from Library down and let it rebuild)
So keep ‘plexmediaserver’ but delete ‘Library’ and everything below? I can re-build everything again if you think it would help. I have a couple of thousand tv shows and movies. But if crashes again I assume it’s something else?
Yes, you delete Library (sudo rm -rf Library)
My concern with the file system damage is what else happened internal to PMS.
Whenever a filesystem is that badly crashed, clearly the database didn’t get closed properly.
At some unknown point in the future, it will come back to bite.
This is why I recommend getting over the hump now.
I also recommend making a full tar.gz backup of Library ( with PMS stopped )
when you have it fully back with all metadata. This will minimally give you a known good recovery point.
If it crashes again, Try another distro.
Deleted and rebooted, now there is a problem with the scanner not matching any of the movies. Looking at some of the solutions it says to delete the cache folder, is that correct to try and fix the agent for matching to work? I can’t even manually search for anything.
what are you doing please?
A partial or a full rebuild?
If you’re attempting to recover:
- Stop Plex
- Delete Cache and Logs directories (because they’re blown – notice the 4096 size)
- Restart Plex
- Let it get itself caught up again (it’s expecting data to already exist and will need recreate it)
I deleted the Library like you said, so I presume that’s partial? When I deleted the Library and rebooted I had to re-scan everything. Is that not to be expected?
I only see the 4096 for the logs?
That looks a lot better.
Yes, it’s expected to rescan. It has to figure out where it’s at.
Thanks, I am waiting for my library to finish and then I will make the backup once all the metadata is loaded. If it does crash again, is this a way to quickly bring everything back or what does a backup of the library folder do? Can I just replace the new library with the backup?
Once you get a full tar image (with it stopped of course),
If it crashes, you just lay this down right over the new installation and it will take over (it’s a full replacement) complete with all the metadata
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