"Not Enough Disk Space to Convert" Despite ~954 GB of Free Disk Space

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Today I tried streaming my copy of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” (a 4K HDR file) from my Debian 12 server powered by an i7-13700K with 16GB of RAM.

I got this error (in Swedish) on my IPhone XR:

IMG_3257.PNG
IMG_3257.PNG481×1040 40.8 KB

And here’s what “df -h” gives me (“Enterprise_Storage” is the drive in question):

alexl@memory-alpha:~$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            7,7G     0  7,7G   0% /dev
tmpfs           1,6G  1,5M  1,6G   1% /run
/dev/nvme0n1p2  227G  6,2G  209G   3% /
tmpfs           7,7G  4,0K  7,7G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5,0M     0  5,0M   0% /run/lock
/dev/nvme0n1p1  511M  5,9M  506M   2% /boot/efi
/dev/sda2       3,7T  2,6T  1,1T  72% /mnt/Berry_Storage
/dev/sdb2       3,7T  2,9T  839G  78% /mnt/Pi_Storage
/dev/sdd2       3,7T  2,8T  954G  75% /mnt/Enterprise_Storage
/dev/sdc2       5,5T  3,8T  1,8T  69% /mnt/Movie_Storage
tmpfs           1,6G     0  1,6G   0% /run/user/1000

I also have my transcode directory set to “/dev/shm”:

Skärmbild (87)_Cropped
Skärmbild (87)_Cropped1023×489 51.5 KB

What can I do about this error?

EDIT: I can stream other titles though; one Bond film worked just fine.

2

Did you check Inodes?

3 
alexl@memory-alpha:~$ df -i
Filesystem         Inodes IUsed      IFree IUse% Mounted on
udev              2004918   525    2004393    1% /dev
tmpfs             2010781   988    2009793    1% /run
/dev/nvme0n1p2   15171584 95401   15076183    1% /
tmpfs             2010781     5    2010776    1% /dev/shm
tmpfs             2010781     2    2010779    1% /run/lock
/dev/nvme0n1p1          0     0          0     - /boot/efi
/dev/sda2      1125093112  3354 1125089758    1% /mnt/Berry_Storage
/dev/sdb2       879721100 17457  879703643    1% /mnt/Pi_Storage
/dev/sdd2       999726668   616  999726052    1% /mnt/Enterprise_Storage
/dev/sdc2      1829134108  1097 1829133011    1% /mnt/Movie_Storage
tmpfs              402156    22     402134    1% /run/user/1000
alexl@memory-alpha:~$

The drives under /mnt are NTFS formatted since they were created on another computer.

4

Do you have DEBUG server logs which capture it failing ?
(the ZIP file please)

5

In your first post, the screenshot shows /dev/shm being only 7.7 GB, guessing that’s a ramdisk?
Then you set Plex to use that directory for transcoding, that’s not a lot for a 4k transcode?

6

Could I follow this to increase the RAM disk for /dev/shm?:
https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/what-is-devshm-and-its-practical-usage.html

The strange things is that lots of similar transcodes has worked before on similarly sized movie files.

7

It depends, in your first post you seemed to want to be using that mnt/Enterprise_Storage drive for transcoding, if that is the case, you’d want to put that in the Plex settings for transcoder directory instead of dev/shm.

If you have a lot of ram, then yes you use fstab entry to increase dev/shm.

For example, my servers have 128 GB of memory so I provision 96 to dev/shm.

I’m pretty sure the size of the transcoded file ends up determining how much space is used in the transcoded directory. The motion picture 4k is a directors cut that’s pretty long. And if you transcode to 1080p versus 720 or 480 or something, I think you’d end up with a smaller file, so maybe that’s why it’s not come up before?

8

To provide a variant on /dev/shm, I do a formal mount
(I have 256 GB)

# ramdisk
tmpfs /ramdisk tmpfs defaults,size=192G 0 0
1 Like
9

Could I set this in /etc/fstab and still run Debian 12 fine?:

none      /dev/shm        tmpfs   defaults,size=10G        0 0
10

The thing is that other films I have which are of similar size (~83 Gigabytes) and 4K HDR have played fine in their original quality before with the same limitations on /dev/shm.
I can play e.g. “Oppenheimer” (2023) fine and that one is about 85 Gigabytes 4K HDR.

I don’t get why it’s acting up now. I rarely make big system config changes.

11

Maybe the others direct play and this one is being remuxed or transcoded?

12

Usually when I open a movie for playback I pause it ASAP and then select the playback quality in the playback settings. The other films I’ve mentioned are also using the HEVC codec like ST:TMP.

13

Log file if anyone can help:
Plex Media Server Logs_2023-12-29_18-53-10.zip (4.4 MB)

14

@alex_la59

Thanks for the logs. It pops right up.

Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.257 [140170546592568] DEBUG - [Req#21c/Transcode] Using session GUID 44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4 for new transcode session.
Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.257 [140170546592568] DEBUG - [Req#21c/Transcode] Using existing transcode session.
Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.258 [140170628107064] DEBUG - Completed: [192.168.0.142:50249] 206 GET /video/:/transcode/universal/start.m3u8?audioBoost=100&autoAdjustQuality=0&directPlay=1&directStream=1&directStreamAudio=1&fastSeek=1&includeCodecs=1&location=lan&mediaBufferSize=40000&partIndex=0&path=%2Flibrary%2Fmetadata%2F3216&protocol=hls&session=44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4&subtitleSize=100&useDoviCodecs=1&videoResolution=4096x2160 (8 live) #21c TLS 17ms 463 bytes (range: bytes=0-) 
Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.329 [140170578180920] DEBUG - Request: [192.168.0.142:50250 (Subnet)] GET /video/:/transcode/universal/session/44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4/base/index.m3u8 (9 live) #22f TLS Signed-in (range: bytes=0-) 
Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.329 [140170578180920] DEBUG - [Req#22f/Transcode/44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4] Starting a transcode session 44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4 at offset -1.0 (state=3)
Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.329 [140170578180920] DEBUG - [Req#22f/Transcode/44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4] TPU: hardware transcoding: enabled, but no hardware decode accelerator found
Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.330 [140170578180920] DEBUG - [Req#22f/Transcode/44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4] [Universal] Using local file path instead of URL: /mnt/Enterprise_Storage/Star_Trek_Films/Star Trek - The Motion Picture (1979) {edition-Director's Edition}/Star Trek - The Motion Picture (1979) {edition-Director's Edition}.mkv
Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.330 [140170578180920] DEBUG - [Req#22f/Transcode/44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4] TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: , final encoder: 
Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.330 [140170578180920] WARN - [Req#22f/Transcode/44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4] Low disk space: 8.5GB source file, 7.67GB capacity, 7.67GB available on "/dev/shm/Transcode/Sessions"
Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.330 [140170578180920] WARN - [Req#22f/Transcode/44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4] TranscodeSession: inadequate disk space for transcode
Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.330 [140170578180920] DEBUG - [Req#22f/Transcode/44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4] Streaming Resource: Terminated session 0x7f7c03d34e48:62D77409-2F6F-416C-9FDF-A22F7FC67485 with reason Not enough disk space to convert this item.
Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.331 [140170578180920] ERROR - [Req#22f/Transcode/44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4] Failed to start session.
Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.331 [140170544483128] DEBUG - [Req#22f/Transcode/44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4] Killing job.
Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.331 [140170544483128] DEBUG - [Req#22f/Transcode/44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4] Job was already killed, not killing again.
Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.331 [140170544483128] DEBUG - [Req#22f/Transcode/44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4] Stopping transcode session 44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4
Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.331 [140170510183224] DEBUG - [Req#22f/Transcode/44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4] Cleaning directory for session 44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4 (/dev/shm/Transcode/Sessions/plex-transcode-44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4-672fbd1b-4763-4772-83e2-c7a1fb8111da)

Dec 29, 2023 18:39:37.330 [140170578180920] WARN - [Req#22f/Transcode/44D48934-B754-4CDD-98AA-FBE843861EF4] Low disk space: 8.5GB source file, 7.67GB capacity, 7.67GB available on “/dev/shm/Transcode/Sessions”

Can’t use /dev/shm as your transcoder temp with only 8GB.

HDDs are MORE than fast enough – or is this a purely SSD system?
( FYI – Samsung 970 Pro 1TB has a 1.2 PB TBW which would last quite a while )

15

My system drive as you can proably see is a 120 GB NVMe SSD which I would like to spare as much as possible from repetetive R/W activity. As said above Oppenheimer play right away and is way longer and larger in file size.

EDIT: And I don’t want to use any HDD for transcoding even if technically feasible.

Would this work?:

none      /dev/shm        tmpfs   defaults,size=10G        0 0
16

As you size this, remember it’s not about file size. It’s about what the transcoder output codec and bitrates need to be.

The transcoder will prune as it goes but needs at least 1x space to get started

Q: Why not use HDD?

17

I wan’t to reserve HDD space for future titles etc. Maybe I could add another RAM stick to my server.

19

If you can take the machine to full 64 GB, that would be ideal.

(upgrade as matched pairs / matched kit – where all dimms are the exact same)

20

It worked now when I changed the “Transcoder default throttle buffer” from 600 seconds to 120 seconds.

21

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