As a long time user of plex for several years, I am somewhat stumped by a problem which has started happening over the last couple of days.
On deck is now listing;
Random episodes of newly added content, from shows I have never watched. In fact when looking at the show summary plex confirms I have never watched any episode. After marking the entire show as watched and then unwatched, the show was removed from On Deck as you would expect if I had watched one by accident. For example my last update added new episodes for around 15 shows. 2 of these shows then appeared OnDeck - and no I’ve never watched them. The previous update I performed made 3 new episodes appear, again I have NOT watched any of them and the plex & web GUI confirm this when looking at the show information.
Season 1 Episode 1 of an unwatched show suddenly appeared on deck and would not go away until I used the web UI to mark it as watched/unwatched. Marking it as watched/unwatched made no difference via the PlexMediaPlayer (embedded) interface. An episode from that show was added, but not s01e01 - and again, I really have never watched it, not ever and the roku/web GUI confirms this. It was a show with no specials also so why on earth s01e01 would appear OnDeck (unwatched) is … well its wrong.
My question is, has this started happening for anyone else? If so, are plex aware of an issue? If not then I’ll start looking in the logs and provide more information :neutral:
Just thought I’d ask the community first before I spend the time investigating/providing info/rebuilding my database. Thanks!
##3
Have you activated the DLNA server in Plex recently or did you add some new device to your local network recently, which supports DLNA?
Some DLNA client devices have a habit of randomly play a few seconds from a DLNA server to create a thumbnail picture or gain other data about the file.
Try disabling the DLNA part of Plex and monitor the issue a few days.
(Settings - Server - DLNA)
A snapshot of a debug log does not show any matches for corrupt/malformed so luckily I don’t need to try and repair my database. I’ll leave the log running and check again tomorrow sometime.
DLNA is enabled. I will disable it as I don’t use it, and monitor if this helps. Edit: No new devices/updates on the network so this is likely to be a red herring. I’ll try it though.
Will library size be impacting a limit imposed by whatever queries you are using or some other limit?
Will the size of my library, specifically the database, be causing knock on problems with the SQL queries you are using to determine OnDeck entries? I would guess not but there may be other implications of a large library over and above SQL queries which may impact the correct determination of what is ‘On Deck’ in Plex Media Server.
I’ve never experienced any problems like this at all. I do run my Plex install on an SSD for added speed but everything is still fast and I have no abnormalities like those described here.
I’ve also played around adding fake entries to my system and know I’m good for at least 5 times my current library size. The only thing I’ve seen that slows my system down is music since I’ve got a decent size music collection. I moved that to a different/old computer running plex that doesn’t have to worry about transcoding video and everything is peachy now.
If you want to shut down your plex server, ZIP up the database files and PM them to me I’d be happy to run a few diagnostic queries against it to check for any type of corruption and make sure there are no problems.
Carlo
PS on a decent size system you might need to Empty Trash, Clean Bundles and then Optimize Database once in a while or after you’ve made substantial changes to any library to keep things in tip-top-shape.
R U positive no one else has access to your account and could start watching something?
R U positive you aren’t using TrakT? Ever had it installed in the past?
If not using, I highly recommend installing and using PlexPy. You will wonder why you never used it prior. This can help you look back at a something that pops up in your continue watching to see who/if/when another user played that and when. Might have a small glitch in a table that is linking the wrong user to your account or something and PlexPy could help with that.
It’s good to know it’s nothing intrinsically limiting about how plex processes onDeck.
I can confirm I have never used trakt. I was running plexpy but then removed it as I do not share my library due to upload restrictions (severe restrictions) so its use was academic. However in this case it would have been extremely useful to check that my account was not accessed! I’ll re-add plexpy to help me track this down - after I change my password.
I’d like to avoid sharing my sqlite db at this time When I get home however I will run an integrity check on it. I’ll empty trash, clean bundles and optimize db now.
Aside from the above all I can do is wait until my next update over the weekend and check if anything else miraculously appears. The debug log is still running.
PlexPy does not show any access to my library on my account since installing it and the issue has not happened again. The database looks ok as far as I can tell with no errors logged over the period since I started debug logging.
After drilling down on a couple of the problem issues I highlighted above it may be the case that some of the ‘recently added’ tv episodes were played by my son by accident on his iPad. Normally this would never happen as his iPad is setup to use guided access when he uses it. Obviously though this is prone to human error and I suspect what has happened is that he accidentally played a few of these after we forgot to start guided access.
I still can’t explain other behaviour such as s01e01 of a show appearing on deck (unwatched) with no specials, but I’m happy now and found at least a couple of examples of behaviour which explained what I saw previously. So in summary I jumped the gun a little bit as I hadn’t considered my sons iPad usage in the above manner.
Thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions.
When I get home however I will run an integrity check on it. I’ll empty trash, clean bundles and optimize db now.
