Server Version#: 1.24.5.5173
Player Version#: 1.37.0.2706-5b2cfe50
Hi everyone,
I am having some trouble with Plex becoming completely unresponsive when I am downloading and/or adding new video media to my Plex server. Plex works great as long as nothing else is being downloaded or added to the server, but as soon as something else shows up, I can’t access my Plex libraries or any shows/movies until the media has been downloaded and moved to its location.
This happens on the localhost:port version of Plex, on the downloaded Mac version of Plex Media Player, on the Apple TV plex app, and on all ios and iPad apps.
My current setup is as follows:
Plex server located on:
Mac Mini (Late 2014) with 2.6GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, 1TB SATA hard drive
OS: Monterey 12.0.1
Plex Media Server version: 1.24.5.5173
My Plex media is stored on a Qnap TS-873 with 32TB storage. It’s only used for Plex - there is nothing else on it. The QNAP is accessed through connected ethernet cable and is mounted on my Mac Mini to transfer.
I’m not sure if I’m allowed to share how media shows up onto my computer, but the issue seems to come when SABnzdb is downloading. Everything downloads to an external high speed (but not SSD) hard drive then is unpacked and transferred over to the NAS.
Plex doesn’t crash, it just doesn’t load any libraries for anyone while things are downloading. I have SAB set to pause when unpacking to try to ease the load on the computer so it’s only doing one thing at a time. Sometimes when I try to open a library (both the library and the recommended pages in each library), there’s just a spinning circle for sometimes five or ten or twenty minutes. Eventually there’s usually an error that shows up saying “there was a problem” without any other information.
The Mac Mini involved in the media download and transfer process is only used for this and doesn’t have anyone doing anything else on it. Activity monitor never shows more than 20 or 30% CPU use and maxes out sometimes at about 50-60% RAM use. On the Plex dashboard, CPU sometimes goes up to 60%, but that’s only when doing things like detecting intros, etc. Otherwise it stays quite low.
If something is streaming from Plex while this happens, it also freezes and becomes unavailable once the pre-downloaded part runs out.
I have tried restarting my computer, all the various apps, the server, redownloaded all the involved apps, made sure everything was updated to the most recent stable version, run the optimize database thing in Plex, restarted again, etc. I’m at a loss to figure out what could be causing this issue.
Is it just that my mac mini is that underpowered, even though it doesn’t appear to be maxing out either the CPU or the RAM? Do I need an SSD instead?
I will try to attach my logs from today - it was unresponsive from about 22:00-23:00 ish in the logs. I will also try to attach a screenshot that shows my Plex CPU dashboard. I’ve noticed that the green lines aren’t solid - is that supposed to be like that?
Thank you for any help you can provide!
