Plex Media Server going offline regularly on Linux

Plex Media Server
1

There are a number of threads on this topic but none appear to have a definitive solution. Hopefully another example might further the state of play.

The server goes offline every few hours, with Chrome reporting “This site can’t be reached. refused to connect. Try: Checking the connection Checking the proxy and the firewall ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED”

There doesn’t appear to be a pattern to the issue - in the latest example I was refreshing some metadata from Plex Music but the problem has happened at other times.

The issue usually resolves itself after a few minutes.

Checking the processes running before and after shows a number of Plex tasks have stopped.

before -

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
8421 plex 20 0 898084 119608 16820 S 0.0 24.6 0:04.62 Plex Media Serv
8454 plex 35 15 810932 41220 4332 S 0.0 8.5 0:02.21 Plex Script Hos
8504 plex 20 0 503444 3604 1952 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.48 Plex Tuner Serv
8547 plex 20 0 763560 37700 2764 S 0.0 7.7 0:01.40 Plex Script Hos

after -

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
8454 plex 35 15 810932 44532 2720 S 0.0 9.1 0:02.61 Plex Script Hos
8547 plex 20 0 763560 34956 0 S 0.0 7.2 0:01.51 Plex Script Hos
9118 plex 20 0 753888 30024 3976 S 0.0 6.2 0:01.17 Plex Script Hos

Server Version#: plexmediaserver_1.21.4.4079
Player Version#: Chrome Version 88.0.4324.190
OS: Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS

Logs are available.

2

After experiencing the problem many times over nearly two weeks, I found references to database fragmentation leading to an unresponsive server.

I tried optimizing the database (Settings > Troubleshooting > Optimize database) and the issue has not recurred for over a week.

This is promising but unsatisfying, especially as the scheduled task to optimize the database every week was checked.

Not complaining, just confused.