Nvidia Shield Plex Server vanishing

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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Server Version#: 1.13.8.5395
Player Version#: 1.13.8.5395

On a friend’s recommendation, I bought a shield recently with the intent to turn it into a plex media server. My setup is thus; I’ve got the NVIDIA Shield connected via USB 3.0 to a 4 TB HD, which is mounted as external storage. I’ve got my movies and TV shows loaded and sorted on the hard-drive, and I’ve connected my shield to my windows 10 computer over wifi to have access to the files, in order to add new ones and remove old ones. I use the automatic setup to generate a plex server on the shield, and after setting the drive as the plex’s storage, everything works perfectly. It imports everything and adds all the metadata.
Some time later, the wifi connection breaks and I’m unable to reconnect to the shield over wifi. I fix this with a simple reset, turning the shield on and off again. Somehow, this puts my plex server offline, and instead runs me through the options to generate a new plex server when I try to access the plex app on the shield. The old server remains offline, and I spent all the required time setting up the new server… until the exact same thing happens again. I’m up to my third plex server on the same shield, with 2 fully setup servers stuck “offline”. The files are fine, at least on the external drive, and I’m not sure what setup files plex uses or where it stores them on a shield. I’m at my wit’s end trying to solve this problem, and keep my server online for more than a day. Any ideas?

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I’ve located the metadata from existing servers on my external drive, so it’s not being deleted. It’s stored under \SHIELD\ExternalDriveName\Android\data\com.plexapp.mediaserver.smb\Plex Media Server\Media\localhost. But the plex app either can’t find it, or it’s missing something else it needs for the server.

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I’ve discovered that the server going offline is simply the Shield going to sleep, and fixed that issue. However, the issue remains that if my Shield powers down, whether through the restart/shutdown function or a power outage, it seems to make my server permanently offline. I’m no closer to fixing that issue.

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Yesterday, with no error messages, no warnings, no formatting, and no detectable faults, my drive attached to the shield decided to wipe out all its data. Restarting the shield in the hope that my eyes were deceiving me and my data wasn’t actually all gone caused the server to once again go permanently offline. I’ve decided to abandon this effort, as it is more trouble than it’s worth.

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Had not have my drive randomly wiped yet but I have this problem as well. I thought I fixed it but it has appeared again after half a month.

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Just curious if you ever found a solution since I’m experiencing the same situation. It’s very frustrating to have to re-setup everything every time the Shield loses power. It says it’s their on my computer through their client app, but I haven’t found a way to turn it on on the shield. The shield lists them, but it won’t let me access any of the ones that say they are off so I have to restart everything from scratch with a new one once again.

SO FRUSTRATING!!!

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I gave up and have been hosting the plex server on my windows 10 desktop instead. I’m not thrilled about it, but I’m getting none of the same problems. I never found a solution.

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I’m glad to read it’s not just us having the same problem. After reading so much good press about the Nvidia Shield TV with Plex and reading about Plex, we decided that on paper it w as s looking like these devices would be a good device to replace our aging WD TV Live Streamers we have throughout the house. We bought them in 2011 and they’ve been workhorses…they still work but it’s better to replace them on our schedule & not because of a disaster.

We recently purchased Nvidia Shield 16 Gb (Android 8) but once we reached our PMS #5 we did one more reset but will do no more for this device. Logs were no help but we only saw 1 error message (something about a muted or something like that - can’t access logs now).

Our environment is a little different in tha as mentioned above, our PMS is on Nvisia Shield, the source music/video/photo directories are on our WD MYCLOUD EX2ULTRA NAS, everything is connected via ethernet. (We know the WD works because you can buy them with PlexMedia Server already installed).

We did try to expand our storage with a PNY USB 3.0 Solid State 240 GB drive but instructions are not very good so it took a few attempts after piecicing together various pieces of information from around the web. Eventually we got it to work and tested it by rebooting Shield a few times. Then this morning when we turned it on, the PMS had just disappeared.

I couldn’t figure out why we still had the names of previous PMSs after a “reset” & “reset + erase”, but then I looked at our “authorized devices” in our account.

But still a) WHY did it lose the server in the first place, b) why won’t it restart when you tell it to restart, and c) I see information for backing up and restoring for many platforms EXCEPT Nvidia Shield or Android. Why (before we bought the PNY SS Drive), after playing a TV episode, do we get the mess mage it lost the connection to the server but clicking on “Retry” makes it work again? The Plex Client (app) and Plex Media Server are on the SAME device.

We bought the 2nd Shield the day before this all happened and after all we went through we decided to end to return them (only had it 13 days) and instead buy the Pro.

Yeah, it’s been more than frustrating.

I should mention we ONLY use the Nvidia Shield and Plex Media Server for playing videos, music, and viewing photos. We do not develop software nor play games on it. I won’t say never but it needs to be stable first. (Thanks to this thread I found out we can prevent the device from going to sleep so I’ll have to do some research on how to do the same thing.)

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Exact same problem. I just bought a Plex Pass, a 4TB hdd an HdHomeRun Connect Quatro to use with my 2015 shield TV 16Gb to discover I need to reconfigure everything each time my Shield TV restarts. Is it because I moved all metadata to the attached external drive, I do not know?

This is one of the most frustrating issue I ever had with my technology. Reconfiguring the different library is something, but having to reschedule all the recording for the live TV is just too much. It really needs to be more stable.

To me this is a blocker, there is no purpose to develop anything else on PMS for the ShieldTV until this is resolved or a workaround is found.

Also, it is kind of related, but I haven’t found any way (reasonable) to restore a database backup with the ShieldTV. This could at least help in situation like this. No documentation , nothing. Why taking backup then?

I hope this is resolved soon.

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Similar problem: PMS is set to use the flash drive, this works, but it forgets it using this each time you reboot and even if you set it back to use the drive, it doesn’t pick-up the files it previously created and it starts off again as if a brand new install.

I’m also experiencing the same problem (now) with it going offline temporarily when trying to play live tv. It just disappears (presumably PMS crashes). It works fine for non-live media content, ie. stuff sitting on my NAS connected a network attached storage.

Grrr - I wish the Plex team would get these problems resolved, it’s just too unstable at the moment on Nvidia shield using Live TV and/or with external storage.

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Just a follow up. I guess misery enjoys company. Not happy to have the problem, but glad to hear I’m not the only one. So very disappointed with PLEX. That is the primary reason I purchased my Nvidia Shield TV was to be able to view my own media files kind of like my own Netflix. The fact I have to either leave my Nvidia Shield + attached HD running 24/7 even when not using it or have to reload a new server on start up every time is ridiculous. I don’t understand why it can’t locate my files on startup.

I’ve switched to KODI which works great with my attached TV. It has no problem starting up and remembering where my files are on my attached HD. It is also much faster loading files than PLEX. The only problem is that I can’t seem to find a way to stream the KODI library to another TV in my home which has an attached ROKU (my father is bed bound so I want to share the movies he loves). The Roku Media Player will detect and even load the library from my KODI, but will not play any of the titles saying it doesn’t have a good codec. The frustration continues. I can’t seem to find anything on ROKU that will play them as of yet. It would be nice if KODI had a ROKU app, but it doesn’t.

And get this… Everyone just suggests PLEX which has a ROKU app. Around and round I go.

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I just wanted to leave one final followup in case anyone comes here looking for help.

SUCCESS!!! It took some work but I’m now able to stream my dad’s movies to the TV in his bedroom (he’s bed bound) from my Nvidia Shield TV with KODI in the living room so that he can now watch the movies he loves and I don’t have to recreate my library constantly on startup like I did with PLEX.

As previously mentioned I switched from PLEX to KODI on my Nvidia Shield TV because the server would crash on startup unless I kept it running 24/7 which is ridiculous. On KODI once you have your library setup you can go into the kodi settings and turn on the UPnP/DLNA so that it will make it discoverable on your local network. The Roku Media Player app on his Roku had no trouble picking up KODI right from the beginning and I could see the full library. The problem was that it was in a format Roku could not play (ROKU is notoriously bad at providing codecs for most formats). So I used the program HANDBRAKE to re-encode/reformat/repackage the movies originally in .mkv from the program MAKEMKV to .m4v and now they play using the Roku Media Player. HANDBRAKE makes it real easy. They have presets for ROKU already setup so all you have to do is choose the ROKU preset you want. I used the 1080p ROKU preset and it worked perfectly. It does take some time and computer processing time to do (20-30 minutes per DVD MKV), but I was so happy it worked. Replaced the MKV versions with the new ones and voilà we are now streaming video from our Nviadia Shield TV through our local network to my dad’s ROKU media player. All my dad’s movies are on DVD so I haven’t tried blu-ray yet. I have no need to downgrade my movies to play on Roku.

I do hope this helps someone avoid the frustration I went through at least until PLEX gets their act together. KODI has worked flawlessly so far (cross my fingers) and is instantly available when I turn on my Nvidia Shield TV. I don’t have to leave it running 24/7 which is stupid not to mention the wear and tear on equipment unless you are using it constantly.

I’m not exactly tech savvy so this all took a lot of google searching to put together which I hope my tale will save others from having to do.

Technology is supposed to make things easier and when the opposite is the case it is incredibly frustrating. So I hope this keeps others from going through the same experience I had.

Bottom line PLEX is not ready for prime time on Nvidia Shield even though it is being sold as if it is, but there is a work around with KODI.

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I would really like someone from PLEX staff to weigh in on this. Because for me switching to KODI is not an acceptable option for me. I want a stable PMS on NVidia Shield. Currently I see all the files on NVidia Shield USB hard drive through Kodi but I cannot view those files outside my home and PLEX no longer sees those files after a power failure that lasted longer than my UPS. (52 hours). Surely PLEX, there must be a way to get my PMS to locate those files on the NVidia Shield. Please fix it.

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Are these still happening ? There was evidence of low memory issues on the nVidia Shield leading to processes being killed - would like to know if these failures are still arising and would like to see fresh logs with debug enabled and indication as to when the connection was lost

See
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201643703-reporting-issues-with-plex-media-server/
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250417-plex-media-server-log-files/

https://support.plex.tv/articles/201573117-android-android-tv-fire-tv-logs/

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I replied in this other thread about similar issues - any time a restart of the shield is done, the PMS either reverts to “localhost” and loses the config pointing to the external USB drive for PMS data (requiring complete setup again) or when it restarts and fails, PMS isn’t running at all and requires setup from scratch.

I can send those same logs to you if the original plex team member hasn’t shared them (I’d rather not post publicly).

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I have the same exact problem, plex loose all the settings on restart and then I have to setup my all library again from scratch I loose 3days each time to setup again every thing…
I though it was coming from a faulty external drive, I bought a new one but it’s the same. I have now a new drive and a plex pass that are useless…
It would be good if plex team try to debug this or at least allow to save settings and library on the shield…

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I tried several things yesterday : wiping cache, wiping data, change where the PMS data was stored, whole factory reset of the shield and nothing worked… Each time I restarted the shield plex asked me to perform a new installation of the server…
And then I tried another thing : I wiped cache and data from plex and pms, restarted the shield, then in Google play I uninstalled the update for PMS, I blocked the auto update feature from play store and restarted the shield. Then I performed a new pms install of my database without updating plex. And… For the moment after 3 restart of shield nothing dissapeared!
Finger crossed for the moment. I’m stuck with an old version of PMS but it seems to be working.
Someone could test this and make some feedback if it works?
@sa2000 you should really check this issue. It doesn’t seems to be coming from shield or from external disk but rather from the 3 last updates of PMS in which I got this issue.

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Hello there, I’m having the same issue and had to reset PMS on my Shield three times over the past 2 months. Issue seems to appear randomly, roughly once every 10 Shield power on/off (so I can refresh media files sitting on external hdd plugged in the Shield).
Then I’m left with the “local host” option until proper reset (recreate server, map folders, match, permission granting)
Can Plex folks please look into that? Right now the PMS experience on Shield really isn’t at par with running it on a Synology NAS or a win 10 PC. thx

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Just want to add to the chorus of voices here that I just got a Shield two months ago and I have had my PMS reset on me seemingly randomly at least three times. It has been a very frustrating experience. I used to run my PMS on a Raspberry Pi 3 and the software was much more stable on that device than it is on the Shield.

It would be nice to hear from the developers as to what is going on with PMS and if a fix is scheduled to be pushed sometime soon? Thank you!

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I too am having the same issue… Not being terribly Tech savvy, I thought local host was the Nividia Shield and just renamed it…duh. I am able to connect to Nvidia shield on my network and download directly to the external drive i have connected to the shield, and all these items show up in the “local host”… so, appreciate any education as to how this is different than the “Nvidia Shield” . There is also the option to cast to “Shield Android TV”, which I presume may be yet something else. Sorry I am not “giving” muck help here and more asking for knowledge, but I am willing to continue to troubleshoot more, and more knowledge is only helpful on that front.