Plex media scanner process running constantly @ 25% CPU usage?

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
1

even worse, when I was having some performance problems, I stopped plex in the package manager, it didn't stop the media scanner process, AND I then ended up with two media scanner processes running @ 25% CPU usage and I eventually had to restart my NAS just to kill it, but now it's back to square one again with 25% usage 24/7.

 

All my media is up to date, so I have no idea where this is coming from, why it's happening OR how to stop it other than to restart the NAS, as although the Synology resource manager tells me that it's running, it won't let me kill it manually.

 

This is happening on a 12 bay Synology DS2413+ with a dual core atom @ 2.13Ghz and 2gb RAM and it's repeatedly killing performance to the point where all I can do is reboot the NAS every few days, which is far from ideal.

 

Any suggestions?

3

thanks for the tip, i think that could be part of my problem.

DSM version is 5.0-4493 (showing as current in the DSM control panel)

plex was showing 0.9.9.10.459-008ea34 but i have just updated it to the latest synology/intel version on the plex website, which is 0.9.9.12.504-3e7f93c

my toddler is currently watching the jungle book though, so i can't reboot the NAS as the minute to test further. :D

although rather annoyingly, with plex stopped, the old plex media scanner is now showing as 'deleted' but is STILL consuming 25% of the CPU resources in resource manager.  :angry:

is there a way to automate the process of renaming and/or reorganising tv shows as there is approx 4tb of various seasons of (over 400 different) tv shows to sift through so it's not a simple process?

most of it is reasonably well organised with seasons of each show in their own folder and all the season folders grouped into a single folder for the show, but it's not necessarily all going to be organised in the way that plex is going to want to read it with cleaned filenames and that kind of thing as i've never needed to until now.

i tried 'therenamer' but although it's good for doing a couple of seasons at a time, it's not practical for me to use to rename the 400+ shows i have.

i need something i can just point at my tv folders and let it scan and organise everything (at least semi) automatically in a way that plex can read and understand it without it falling over.

5

First off, do not forget to run that extended SMART scan. It doesn't just check the health of your drives but it does do a full scan of the filesystem. It will give you peace of mind if nothing else, knowing your drives/files are ship shape 

I actually already have it set to do a quick smart test once a week and a full test that runs once a month.  :) 

6

Hi all, I'm getting this exact issue too... My PC has only been on about 26 Hours, but the CPU time for the Plex Media Scanner (32 bit) is sitting at about 21 hours - so not quite maxed, but close enough. My drives aren't giving me any SMART issues, and it seems a bit overkill for the process to try "forever" just because of one incorrectly named episode...

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Are there plans to patch the process to 'give up' after a few hours? This doesn't seem terribly helpful at the moment....  :blink:

8

also may sure plex didn't not got stuck running a scheduled task

my system was experiencing similar issues , about 25% cpu usage all the time

my money is on this task :)

"Generate missing media index files during maintenance"

its a good addition ,but does take some resources  it may got stuck and no stopped at the determined time.

i end up rebooting the device... cpu usage is back to normal 

9

I am having the same problem.  My library is over 1200 movies and when I add a new movie plex media scanner will run forever, i've seen as many as 4 plex media scanner running at the same time??  I just added 1 movie and attached a screen pic of what my CPU usage is immediately after adding (see attached).  

I have a good win8 PC with a high end i5 and 8gb of ram that does nothing else but Plex.  Media Scanner is slamming my CPU to 100% for hours and hours making it impossible for more than 1 person to use Plex.  I have to manually kill media scanner and my cpu usage instantly goes from 100% to 3%.  

Someone please help - this is EXTREMELY frustrating !   :angry:

11

I disabled that option 2 months ago - it didnt help.  From last post (1.5 hrs) til now there are 3 scanners running using 97% of the CPU (see attached).  

This is so frustrating - Plex used to run flawlessly until a few releases ago.

12

There are issues that have been seen where the scanner gets stuck whilst analyzing one specific media file and we have also had reports of repeated analyze being done on the same media file resulting in multiple scanner processes running 

You may be having similar issues - to confirm would need to set Debug Logging on Plex Media Server, restart Plex Media Server and when it happens capture all Plex Media Scanner.log files (.log, .log.1, .log.2 etc) and Plex Media Server.log and a copy of the file it is stuck on, This can then be added to the set already referred to the developers.

You should report this in the PMS Windows forum. You can have a link to it here if you wish to be linked to this synology topic

13

Thanks for your help - I will dump the log file and link this into the windows forum.