I replaced my plex server with a newer box that consumes a lot less power. I copied the media from the old, to the new server, installed the current version of Plex (and is still current), and added the media folder. Normal stuff right?
I should note, I only use Plex for music…no video.
I had been living with it for a few weeks and noticed that it was way buggier than the old server. As I shuffled through my collection it would occasionally get hung up and stop playing. Looking at the server, I noticed that a lot of artists had no poster picture, so I started fixing that, and album art, but the more I cleaned the more I found that some artists that I had 20 albums were only showing 5, often associated with a spinning tag icon where the blank cover art would be. Other artists are just plain missing entirely.
I had some success moving the artists out of the scanned library folder, updating library, then moving it back. That worked sometimes. However, the more I fix, the worse it gets. Artists that had at least some albums are now just gone. I can’t get them to re-import. The media files are there…but they will not import into Plex. I also tried running a library clean up, but that did not help.
All of my files live on a local drive, on the server. Not an external NAS. Instead I have that folder synced to OneDrive as a backup. So it’s all local. It’s on an SSD so it’s fast enough, and this server does nothing but stream music back to me. No video. It’s not my primary computer. No web surfing (outside of things related the server, like downloading newly purchased media, or correcting poster images). It’s just a server, setup to never go to sleep.
Any suggestions? Honestly, I’m kinda at the point where I want to just uninstall Plex and either start over from scratch or move on to a different server platform. I’ve put that much time into trying to fix this.
I am using an ubuntu based server, and after the last update, I’m experiencing something similar. Any/all music added to the existing library is not imported. mp3/flac/wma … does not seem to matter the extension of the file either. It is simply not adding new music. Existing music plays just fine. TV, movies, and other video items seem to add to their libraries ok. I’ll dig into the logs a bit on my system to see what I can find.
After looking through the logs, this is what I found. This is one of the albums that does not get added to the music section. The issue is the segmentation fault that occurs during the scan with ‘Plex Media Scanner’. I found this fault happening on every album that is missing in my library. I’ve removed the albums, added them back, still the error. I took an existing album, removed it from the library, scanned the library, emptied the trash, and moved the album back. It also now generates the segmentation fault too.
Apr 21, 2025 16:30:26.681 [130473579785016] DEBUG - Scanner: Processing directory /server/music/Jelly Roll - Whitsitt Chapel (2023) (parent: yes)
Apr 21, 2025 16:30:26.682 [130473563007800] DEBUG - [JobRunner] Jobs: Starting child process with pid 1026927
Apr 21, 2025 16:30:26.690 [130473579785016] DEBUG - Directory had 13 files, database had 0 files, can't skip.
Apr 21, 2025 16:30:26.772 [130473563007800] DEBUG - Killing job.
Apr 21, 2025 16:30:26.772 [130473563007800] DEBUG - Signalling job ID 1026927 with 9
Apr 21, 2025 16:30:26.772 [130473563007800] DEBUG - Native Scanner: Executed Match stage in 0.09 sec.
Apr 21, 2025 16:30:26.772 [130473563007800] DEBUG - Native Scanner: Executed Add to Database stage in 0.00 sec.
Apr 21, 2025 16:30:26.772 [130474840173368] DEBUG - Jobs: '/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Scanner' exit code for process 1026927 is -11 (signal: Segmentation fault)
Apr 21, 2025 16:30:26.772 [130473563007800] DEBUG - Native Scanner: Executed Media Analysis stage in 0.00 sec.
Apr 21, 2025 16:30:26.773 [130473579785016] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity - completed 1.5% - Scanning Music
I have about 60/40 success rate. A little better than half the time, removing and re-adding does work. But other times it does not.
So far, newly purchased music does get added on a scan, but I’m obviously not adding as much new music as I am trying to fix old music.
I am not sure why, as I did not change anything on the server, but last night at midnight CST, the ‘Plex Media Scanner’ added all of the missing albums. I do not have a reason to explain why it suddenly worked after 3 months. The logs are nearly identical, except that the scanner did not fault.
