Plex Media Server not launching

Plex Media Server
1

I migrated my computer with a new computer that is running macOS Monterey 12.7.6 and the Plex Media Server just does not open. I have tried downloading and reinstalling the app but it still does not open. I downloaded PlexMediaServer-1.42.2.10156-f737b826c-universal. Please help and thank you

2

If the Plex Media Server won’t start and doesn’t even get to the stage where it’ll be writing to the server logs, you can attempt the following procedure to see if there’s any error messages on the OS level:

  1. Open Finder and navigate to /Applications
  2. Select Show Content from the context menu of the Plex Media Server.app item
  3. Navigate to Contents/MacOS
  4. Open the Terminal app
  5. Drag the Plex Media Server executable from the Finder window (#3) into the Terminal Window and press Return to execute it

This is no different from running the app, so it won’t succeed – but you should get a more specific error message about what’s causing it to fail starting.

3

When you say it won’t open, what do you mean? Do you see the Plex icon in your top menu bar?

Plex isn’t an application that “opens” in the traditional sense, you access the server via browser http://:32400/web or http://localhost:32400/web . What happens when you go to either of those urls?

4

Error: Unable to set up server: sqlite3_statement_backend::loadOne: database disk image is malformed (N4soci10soci_errorE)

Please help.

5

Option 1: attempt to repair the corrupted database

Option 2: restore your database from a backup created by your Plex Media Server (if this was enabled in the server’s scheduled tasks).
https://support.plex.tv/articles/202485658-restore-a-database-backed-up-via-scheduled-tasks/

Note: don’t restore from a Time Machine backup. Those can contain corruption, e.g. if they were taken while your server was writing updates.
[edit: that’s probably how you got your database corrupted in the first place]