Plex Media Server on Nvidia Shield is a Joke

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
1

Server Version#: v1.21.1.3830
Player Version#: N/A

I have two 2017 Nvidia Shields, one of which is idle a high percentage of the time…so I thought it would be a good idea to migrate my existing Plex Server off of my Windows 10 media server onto this 2017 Shield. (Wanted to free up resources on the Media Server for encoding jobs). BIG MISTAKE! Plex Media Server on the Shield appears to be about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.

I bought a Samsung Fit 128 GB USB 3.0 flash drive and set it up on the Shield as external storage. Then I set up the Plex server to move the user data to the external storage. Then I stopped the plex server and copied my Plex DB files and Metadata folder over to the appropriate location on the Samsung Fit 128GB flash drive. Started Plex server back up on Shield successfully. Then I logged in to the Plex Web app from my PC and updated my Media Folder locations. Everything was working great at this point and was running fine for over 2 days. I watched several videos from remote clients outside my network with no issues.

This morning I added a new share on my Windows 10 server and it wasn’t showing up as visible when I tried to add it as a media library source on the Plex server (could browse to the share just find from X-Plore App on the Shield). So I figured I might just need to restart the shield for the share to show up. I restarted the Shield from Settings --> Restart and when it came back up the Plex server did not start and now refuses to start manually from within the Shield Plex app! I checked for updates and noticed that there was a new PMS update available, so I installed it and cleared the Plex & PMS app cache. However, my server will still not start back up.

I also find it VERY unhelpful that no error message is given in the Plex app when the PMS can’t start. How are you supposed to troubleshoot the issue with no error message. I also tried browsing to the Plex Media Server folder on the shield over SMB to see if there is any log file but was unable to see any logs.

Is PMS just busted currently on the Shield? I guess I’m going to have to move my server back to Windows for now to get back online. It’s very disappointing that PMS is this unreliable on the Shield. Any suggestions or tips to resolve are appreciated.

2

If you’re unable to access the logs, it sounds like there may be an issue with the usb drive. Have you checked that this drive is still working? PMS on the Shield will not start if it cannot find the data folder.

If the drive is fine, back it up and change the name of the folder. Clear the PMS data on the Shield which will start over. Setup PMs without making any libraries. Move the data folder to the usb drive and confirm PMS is working. Take the usb drive to your computer and remove the new data folder and rename the folder back to match. PMs should reuse the old data folder.

3

I have a very similar bug on my Shield Pro (2019), after a day or two plex server just stops and just like in your case I can’t start it again within the Plex app, the only thing which works for me is a reboot of the Shield and than I can start the server from the App again. Very annoying since you can’t count on your server when you are not at home.

4

Sounds like PMS might be crashing and not closing properly, which is why you can’t restart it. You can try force stopping it form the Shield’s main app setting page.

If you can grab the PMS logs the next time this happens, we can look for a cause.

5

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.