Server Version#: 1.42.1.10060
Player Version#: 8.45
I’ve been getting very frequent plex media server crashes for the last few months and I am now trying to isolate the issue. The server is an old machine that was running macOS Catalina 10.15.7 and now Big Sur (11.7.10) with no change.
My current attempt is a fresh install with what was an empty library, and set up the DVR with a few recording schedules. To make the system crash, I just need a client to watch live tv, and just wait for the crash to happen, it rarely takes more than an hour or two for the media server to crash.
The client is usually an AppleTV on the same wired network, live TV streams come from HDHomerun units.
I turned on debug logging; logs attached for the latest crash here:
I was looking through your various Plex Media Server.log files, and noticed this
Network appears to be configured for jumbo frames.
Is that true?
As far as hints go on how to debug, people usually search those log files, the most recent and sometimes the 1 thru 5 named older ones like Plex Media Server.1.log for the words ERROR, CRITICAL, SQLITE, and sometimes WARN.
Also I wondered if minimizing variables will help, e.g. maybe you can test with a fresh install and no HDHomerun attached nor configured into PMS?
Thanks for taking the time to look at my logs and replying.
I don’t remember configuring jumbo frames for the network interface.
I’ve had a crash while the server was not recording nor handing a file for playback on another device today.
I renamed ~/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server and deleted Plex Media Server from my Applications folder, installed a new copy and started with a single library that contains a single file; the library is set to not detect intro/credits/etc. and I am trying to play it back a few times to see if it will crash. There is nothing configured related to live tv / dvr right now.
sounds like a plan. sometimes a thorough uninstall will sort things.
While testing PMS on Macs, I wrote a shell script to automate the uninstall, which you might want to try if needed.
delpms.sh
#!/usr/bin/env bash
rm -rf /Applications/Plex\ Media\ Server.app && echo '[1/5] deleted the app'
rm -f ~/Library/Preferences/com.plexapp.plexmediaserver.plist && echo '[2/5] deleted the plist'
rm -rf ~/Library/Logs/Plex\ Media\ Server && echo '[3/5] deleted the logs'
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/PlexMediaServer && echo '[4/5] deleted the caches'
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server && echo '[5/5] deleted the application support'
echo 'Two manual steps are required to remove all traces of PMS on your Mac.'
echo ' * Use the link to remove the Mac from your Authorized Devices - Server.'
echo ' * Empty your Trash and restart the Mac.'
echo ' '
echo ' https://app.plex.tv/desktop#!/settings/devices/pms'
echo ' '
Yeah since I was starting from a install-os-on-freshly-formatted-drive, it feels highly probable that when I restore Live TV + DVR functionality it will crash again. But it is interesting to see if it will crash with a simple setup.
The sept. 4 beta seemed to crash less frequently, but it still crashed.
I was unable to make the server crash when it only has to stream an existing video file, although this is not very conclusive because the tests did not span over several hours like my live tv / DVR tests.
Configuring the live tv portion but not viewing live tv nor scheduling recordings did not seem to eventually make the server crash (it still has to download and process program guide data).
I tried to let the apple tv stream a live tv channel from the server and it eventually crashed.
I installed the media server on my Apple silicon MacBook Pro that runs MacOS 26 and I can stream live tv while it records other channels without problem with the same media server version.
I installed the latest beta that was released Sept. 18th to see if things would change. Still getting crashes, although the beta versions from September seem to take longer before I run into a crash.
I noticed that in the MacOS utility “Console”, in the Crash Reports section, I can see all recent Plex Media Server crashes. They are all reporting that the crashed thread is a “PMS HttpServer”, like:
In a different macOS 26 + HDH crashing topic, I think it was pshanew figured out that the streams being captured were MPEG2 and when PMS was set to HW Transcoding, he would get a crash.
His workaround was to disable HW transcoding, and the crashes stopped.
I figured it might be worth reading, even if it sounds pretty far removed from your HTTP Server. My apologies if these are completely different issues.
Sorry to hear it’s still happening. It looks like HDHomerun + PMS is in a bit a state right now. There are a number of topics about it. The biggest thread about it doesn’t have anyone posting logs, though. So maybe what you’ve done will help narrow it down for the devs. While they may not reply here, if you shown steps to reproduce and posted good logs, that makes a world of difference.
