Adding myself to the mix here in a “stand up and be counted” way —Also experiencing this with the following relatively-stock setup:
Mac mini M1 (macOS 15.3.1) connected to…
Synology NAS (DSM version 7.2.2-72806) via…
SMB w/ default macOS & DSM configs (nothing tweaked so far in nsmb.conf or on the DSM side)
Connecting using AutoMounter (with the mountpoint mapped into /Users/Shared/ though)
Latest Plex Server release as of this writing (1.41.4.9463-630c9f557)
Previously I was using an rclone SMB remote mounted using the rclone mount command via FUSE-T. That setup displayed absolutely none of these issues, which makes sense since it uses the go-smb2 library not Apple’s own SMB stack… but I noticed that was only getting about half the expected hardwired throughput performance.
This wouldn’t be an issue for playback (I don’t have any files that exceed 50+ megabytes per second bitrate!) but I recently enabled thumbnails, credits detection, voice detection, etc. across my libraries, so I was looking for the fastest reads possible, which, in some brief testing, the built-in SMB stack seemed to offer.
Buuuut, as we all know, it apparently comes with this distinct downside, where more than half my movie library ended up with trash icons on 'em, plus “File is missing” errors on some playback attempts (but not across the board… sometimes a file showing would still play as expected, which wouldn’t actually remove the icon but it was something at least).
Thankfully I’ve never had “Empty trash automatically” enabled so no real harm done to metadata, etc. and for now I am testing AFP via AutoMounter just for funsies (so far: same speedy throughput as SMB w/ no Plex-trashing issues) but I may end up just going back to that rock-solid rclone setup once I get an initial thumbnail-creation pass done on my libraries.
Anyhooo, will be following along for any updates/findings as they develop!
Thanks for adding to the discussion, @MrCoBalt! Your experience makes sense, especially considering the go-smb2 usage.
I’d be curious if the nsmb.conf file I’ve shared works around your issue too. If it’s easy for you to try, it’d be one more data point that I can add to the bug report I’ve filed.
Well Team thanks for your excellent efforts here - however i need to bow out. The last straw was earlier today.
I needed to restart my MacMini M2 Pro and when it came back i could see automounter had mounted the shared drives and it was fine. Then tried playing something and files were ‘unavailable’. I re-added my libraries but this time despite havign the clear path to my ‘Video’ folder, this time it was seeing a new Mount as ‘Video-1’. I had to rescan based on the new location.
I think I will be configuring a new desktop shortly and moving away from MacOS entirely.
Thanks @Anyware and @gmfreed but I think i will be moving away to possibly even Linux!
@michaelm Sorry for your troubles. Just a guess here, if you feel like messing with it, but it sounds like macOS was still configured to connect to those paths at startup, and so was AutoMounter. It would make sense that AutoMounter would add the “-1” since it was a duplicate path. Removing traces of those mapped paths from Go → Connect to server, and removing them from Login Items in Settings → General, should alleviate that issue. I had a similar issue when I first started using AutoMounter.
Thanks @gmfreed I just checked and the Login Items did NOT have the file paths on startup. I cleared the recent servers from the Go>Connect to Server as well. The only thing mounting the file shares is AutoMounter. It is just annoying as it literally started re-scaning everythign including Intros and Credits etc. Almost feels like it is addign an entire new metadata library now on my Hard Drive.
This new issue combined with slower/random network transfers i described a few weeks back is putting me off.
I’m having the same issues and I’m at the end of my rope.
Mac mini M4
Synology RS1221+ running DSM DSM 7.2.1-69057
Connecting using AutoMounter
As with many people in this thread, it just doesn’t update and sometimes completely doesn’t work. I don’t know if it’s worth jumping through more arcane hoops to get this to work, so if this isn’t fixed by the time I can get a NUC15 from Asus, this Mac mini going in the trash. Honestly, I might just move back to my old NUC which mostly worked fine. What a shitshow.
I forgot to mention it, but yes, /etc/nsmb.conf has been using the configuration from that gist. It’s not as bad as it was, but it still gets stuck—I had to restart the computer for some new files to be detected by Plex.
Unfortunately, I have stumbled across this thread too late (after having set up my PMS from scratch, assuming that it’s a PLEX problem).
Two months ago, I have defined my nsmb.conf like this and, since then, I never again had media items missing all of a sudden:
If keeping Finder open to your movie folder is working for you, there’s no additional benefit by adding the configuration file. In my case, it was still unreliable with just the Finder open.
An open folder in the finder window will eventually close. Before the nsmb.conf file, leaving the finder window open was the bandaid fix. Mine would close itself out at least once per week. I never tracked down the catalyst for that, but it’s likely that either Synology or macOS eventually “resets” the connection, which will jump you back to the top level SMB folder, then on the next scan you’ll get the trashcan icons.
OMG I have been having this issue for some time with MacOS, Synology and AutoMounter. This thread is super long but I skimmed a bit of it and there doesn’t seem to be any fix. Is that correct?
So far so good with this fix, for anyone here from Google who needs step by step instructions for everything, like I do. As others have mentioned, this file wasn’t in my etc folder by default, but I downloaded the .zip from GitHub and now things seem to be back to normal.
Also on MacOS, Synology NAS, with AutoMounter running. My version of the problem: I have approx 500 movies (large disc-ripped remuxes), though with my cartoon and TV libraries, I may be over the 1000-file limit that others have flagged as one of the factors. Plex was constantly picking five random movies to add to “Recently Added” in the Home screen, resetting their metadata. Obviously catastrophic to a meticulous nerd that changes descriptions and poster artwork. Turned off “automatically empty trash” and scheduled scans, and started doing it manually. This worked for a month, but then we were back to the same problem. Even a manual scan would yield 5-6 random movies with the Trash icon, and rescanning would not restore them. All naming conventions in the filenames were on-formula. Changing the filename, then changing it back would get them to restore, but then 5-6 OTHER movies would have the trash icon. Whack-a-mole.
Adding nsmb.conf and then doing a manual scan has restored everything. Fingers crossed for the future, as I really do not want to rebuild on a different kind of computer.
trash icons on 'em, plus “File is missing” errors on some playback attempts (but not across the board… sometimes a file showing 
