Server Version#: 1.42.2.10122
Player Version#: PlexAmp iOS, Plex Web, Plex Apple TV
<If providing server logs please do NOT turn on verbose logging, only debug logging should be enabled>
3-4 times over the last few weeks my Music library has become inaccessible. On the Plex Home page the Music icon has a warning sign over it, and when I go to Plex > Manage > Libraries the Music library is not even listed there. Restarting PMS once or twice will cause the Music library to reappear and working normally.
I’ve looked through the log files and don’t see any errors relating to the Music library. My Music library is on the same filesystem as my other libraries, and all have the same permissions.
I think the problem has occurred after adding batches of albums to my library, so it may be related to the scanner processing new files.
Your logs show name resolution troubles for plex.tv It’s possible your DNS is set to something not very reliable. Most people change their name server to Cloudflare (1.1.1.1)
After you made that change to your DNS server in your OS or router DHCP Server settings, please restart PMS, let it run for a few minutes, the grab your Plex Media Server.log file and zip/upload it again. I was able to watch a startup sequence in the ones you posted due to log rotation.
I use 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1 as my DNS servers, but I do have a Firewalla firewall that intercepts DNS requests. I went through the Firewalla logs and it was not blocking any DNS requests at this time. I rebooted the Firewalla just in case.
I experienced this problem this morning (Sept 18th) and I didn’t see any DNS errors at that time in the logs. If it happens again I’ll note exactly when I notice it.
I noticed that the Music library had reappeared, and when I went to take a snapshot to attached to this post it was missing again. I grabbed logs when it was working (PMS_working.zip) and then a few minutes later when it had disappeared again (PMS_notworking.zip).
Interesting around the time the music library became unavailable, which I’m guessing was near 9:29am at the end of your log, PMS is complaining about s01e11 of The West Wing, not being able to decode one of the streams, usingApple’s videotoolbox HW decoder.
Perhaps you can restart the Mac, get PMS running and happy at idle showing all your libraries, then cause the music library to disappear by playing that one episode.
What also might provide more insight into the issue is the trick of starting PMS from the command line to catch any error message. What we do is
quit out of PMS by right clicking on it in the system tray and choosing Quit
Open a terminal window, paste this in and hit Return
"/Applications/Plex Media Server.app/Contents/MacOS/Plex Media Server"
The cursor will move down a line and just blink, giving no feedback, which is okay. You will see the PMS icon appear in your system tray as usual indicating that it’s running.
Wait or cause the libraries to disappear if you can, then look at the Terminal. If you find any error messages when the Music library becomes greyed out, copy and paste them into your reply.
May I also ask where your media is located? e.g. external USB drive, etc?
okay, good luck!
@MovieFan do you have a moment to consider this topic?
My media is mounted from a Synology NAS via SMBv3. I’ve configured it based on known issues with macOS and SMB - disabled signing, directory caching, SMB multichannel, etc.
Restarted PMS from the terminal and I’ll update if there are any output.
@bdrago When you mentioned your Music library is on a Synology server and accessed over SMB v3, that could be one of the more likely culprits, the way macOS has been having problems with it’s implementation of SMB that you’re already trying to work around.
There are a number of problems folks raise here, on reddit, and superuser among other places about libraries or media being unavailable over SMB, but I have no experience with those network shares to a Mac PMS.
If I were you I’d create a Synology NFS share and put a test Music library in there.
Maybe also reach out to whoever seems the most experienced on these forums with Synology to Mac SMB shares.
How this affects your playlists is also maddening. Do you only have music playlists?
Even if something happens and the drive can’t be seen, the library should still be listed as unavailable. I’ll look at the logs later to see if I see anything.
I’ve tested this with NFS mounts and experienced the same issue. All my media files are on the same shared volume, so if if the share was unavailable it would also make my Movie and TV libraries become inaccessible too.
I created a couple playlists with Movies and TV Shows so I’ll be able to see what happens to them.
Okay that’s good information that it’s independent of SMB vs NFS and that your media is on the same share. Let’s hope your hardware isn’t overheating, has healthy RAM, and wasn’t chewed on by rats, all of which cause some bizarre errors.
While we wait for MovieFan to go through your logs, another common thing to try is running DBRepair, a database utility you can find on GitHub. The author is a Plex Team Member, ChuckPA.
Your logs do show some errors when reading your library info. It sounds like there may be some issues with your database. I’m not sure the repair tool mentioned above will fix this, it’s meant for physical errors, this may be a logical error.
