Plex for Mac does not install/load

Plex Players Desktop Players
61

Thanks. Lets try and launch the Plex for Mac app in terminal and see what errors come back

So after download from plex.tv/downloads and moving to the /Applications folder, start a terminal session and type in

cd /Applications
./Plex.app/Contents/MacOS/Plex

See if the Plex app launches and if any errors show up in terminal and any logs get written to

62

Seem to not do anything
Screen Shot 2020-08-18 at 20.52.12

63

I expected errors or the Plex app launching

Could you list file permissions

so getting

cd /Applications
ls  -ail

and then

cd  /Applications/Plex.app/Contents/MacOS
ls -ail

and also

ls -al ~/Library/Logs

When you launch it through terminal with the following, does Plex show in the Activity Monitor as a running process ?

cd /Applications
./Plex.app/Contents/MacOS/Plex

And could you see if any logs got created within

~/Library/Logs/Plex

64

Indeed new log files are created, but they are also empty just like the previous ones

Screen Shot 2020-08-19 at 06.40.05
Screen Shot 2020-08-19 at 06.40.051257×145 23.3 KB

65

Thanks - so the application is probably exiting just after creating the empty plex.log file

After you launch it in terminal and it hangs - does the plex app show as a running process in Utilities / Activity Monitor ?

could we check the permissions and ownership of directory where the app creates its application data area

ls -ail ~/Library

and

ls -ail ~/Library/Application\ Support

and in these directories - are there any diagnostic / crash reports that get created the time you launch the plex app ?

~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports
~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter

There is a new download now - you could also try that

66

I ran it again from terminal, and took a screenshot. It does seem Plex is running.

Screen Shot 2020-08-19 at 19.53.59
Screen Shot 2020-08-19 at 19.53.591051×476 129 KB

with ls -ail ~/Library and ls -ail ~/Library/Application\ Support I am not sure what folders we are looking for. There are many
 None are called Plex. Please specify what we are looking for.

There is no relationship between running Plex and any report in ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports it seems there isn’t even a folder called ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter on my mac.

67

for the first ls -ail ~/Library I just want to see the line for Application Support in case its owned by root - so just one line from that output

for the 2nd - just pick the first two lines plus any other folder - first?

Thanks

Is the home directory for the user account relocated ? or all internal default drive

68

alright. First command:
12886817516 drwx------+ 113 martijn staff 3616 Aug 6 16:51 Application Support

Here a bunch from the second command:

12886817516 drwx------+ 113 martijn staff 3616 Aug 6 16:51 .
12886817105 drwx------@ 105 martijn staff 3360 May 19 08:24 

12886817517 -rw-r–r-- 1 martijn staff 0 Dec 24 2017 .ACCC_Lock
12886817519 -rw-r–r-- 1 martijn staff 0 Dec 24 2017 .ADCS_Lock
12886817520 -rw-r–r–@ 1 martijn staff 14340 Aug 18 19:51 .DS_Store
12886817521 -rw-r–r–@ 1 martijn staff 10 Nov 10 2014 .Shadowland5.6
12886817518 drwxrwxrwx 2 martijn staff 64 Dec 1 2015 .dcf
12886817523 -rw-r–r-- 1 martijn staff 512 Nov 20 2016 .syssettings12a239c8044f4
12886817522 drwx------ 17 martijn staff 544 Oct 8 2019 AddressBook
12886821000 drwxr-xr-x 28 martijn staff 896 Aug 31 2019 Adobe

Nothing has been relocated, it’s all where it’s supposed to be by default.

69

Thanks - so the binary files showed a user group of “admin”

" martijn@Martijns-iMac MacOS % cd /Applications/Plex.app/Contents/MacOS 
martijn@Martijns-iMac MacOS % ls -ail                                 
total 2056
12909964106 drwxr-xr-x@ 4 martijn  admin     128 Aug 14 13:45 .
12909964103 drwxr-xr-x@ 8 martijn  admin     256 Aug 14 13:45 ..
12909964108 -rwxr-xr-x@ 1 martijn  admin  758528 Jul 29 20:01 Plex
12909964107 -rwxr-xr-x@ 1 martijn  admin  287280 Jul 29 20:01 Plex Transcoder"

but “Application Support” is user group “staff”

Could you delete the binary and install using “staff” group - I am not a Mac OS expert - not sure how that arose

70

With regards to the “+” appearing in here, could you repeat this adding -e option
so

ls -aiel ~/Library
71

Mine matches his, at least regarding those permissions.

Applications (including “Plex.app”) that I have installed in “/Applications” are group “admin”.
The directory “~/Library/Application Support” and contents are (with few exceptions) group “staff”.

My primary gid is 20/staff.
I am a member of 20/staff and 80/admin.

Martijn, I may have asked this before - have you tried creating another admin user account and opening Plex in that account?

72

Okay
 we are on to something here. I have another admin user, which I never really use, its been created for maintenance only. I opened Plex in there, never done that before, and it just opens, im not logged in or anything but the app starts.

I switched back to my usual user account, it still does not start. So its not solved but maybe this helps pointing out the issue.

With regards to the + I ran ls -aiel ~/Library this is what I got.

"12886817516 drwx------+ 113 martijn staff 3616 Aug 6 16:51 Application Support
0: group:everyone deny delete:

73

Interesting that the Plex app launches in another mac account.
The extra info we got with the -e argument to ls, I understand is normal

As the process appears to hang on launch in the martijn after creating the empty plex.log file, we could see if a forced process dump has any clues

So you could try to launch again in terminal using your normal mac account and then when it hangs, open “Activity Monitor”

Double click the proc -> sample button in the lower left
and save the process dump

74

Okay, here is the sample Sample of Plex.txt (72.2 KB)

75

Thank you. Does the same happen with version 1.17.0 ?

https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-desktop/1.17.0.1376-439f8b7f/macos/Plex-1.17.0.1376-439f8b7f-x86_64.zip

Could you repeat the above test and get me sample process dump for 1.17.0 - captured as this time - after a few minutes of launch in terminal

And could i get a list directory of the logs directory to show last modified time for each file

ls -ail ~/Library/Logs/Plex
76

Here by the sample process dump for the newly installed 1.17.0
Sample of Plex 2.txt (72.1 KB)

And the requested list:

martijn@Martijns-iMac /Applications % ls -ail ~/Library/Logs/Plex
total 8
12909365675 drwxr-xr-x 9 martijn staff 288 Aug 21 21:43 .
12887123236 drwx------+ 39 martijn staff 1248 Aug 14 06:42 

12910204367 -rw-r–r-- 1 martijn staff 1310 Aug 18 19:56 Plex Logs.zip
12910453355 -rw-r–r-- 1 martijn staff 0 Aug 21 21:43 Plex.log
12910453288 -rw-r–r-- 1 martijn staff 0 Aug 21 21:42 Plex.log.1
12910412393 -rw-r–r-- 1 martijn staff 0 Aug 21 13:26 Plex.log.2
12910318848 -rw-r–r-- 1 martijn staff 0 Aug 20 06:45 Plex.log.3
12910281774 -rw-r–r-- 1 martijn staff 0 Aug 19 19:53 Plex.log.4
12910230911 -rw-r–r-- 1 martijn staff 0 Aug 19 06:39 Plex.log.5
martijn@Martijns-iMac /Applications %

77

Thank you very much - I have added this to the diagnostics that I have referred to our Plex app development team

It is probably some early error that is not getting logged

78

@sa2000 Thanks for all the help so far. Any idea how long these matters usually take?

79

I am sorry but it is not possible for me to say. I have asked the development team

80

Considering Plex works for you as a different user, I still think the best hypothesis is permissions/privileges for your user or on your home directory.

Until recently, Apple had a support page for how to reset user permissions. Oddly, I couldn’t find it - and it turns out they recently removed it entirely. I suspect that in Apple-think, it means people aren’t supposed to have permissions problems.

Here’s the last version that Apple had up; it suggested Recovery Mode and a repairHomePermissions command, followed by an in-place reinstall. That seems like a BIG shotgun.

Resolve issues caused by changing the permissions of items in your home folder - Apple Support

Before that, these were the instructions for a long time. This is much less intimidating and seems like it’s still worth trying: