Plex Media Server will not start on my iMac

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Hoping someone can tell me what I’m doing wrong here.

I’ve been running PMS on an iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015) for years, and recently upgraded to Monterey 12.1 with no issues, and then out of nowhere PMS just won’t start up.

When I first click on the application I see the Plex logo flash in the top right of the screen, but then it disappears and nothing happens. I can’t get PMS to start up at all.

I tried a compete removal where I deleted the PMS application and then went in and deleted the ~library files in the Application Support and Cache folders and then did a fresh install, but the same thing keeps happening.

I also can’t get to the Plex web interface using https://127.0.0.1:32400/

I’m kind of at a loss now-I’ve had issues in the past where my database has been corrupted and I needed to delete PMS and reinstall and it always worked, but that’s not doing the trick this time.

Anyone else run into this issue/have any ideas on how to get PMS running again?

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Check #1:

Does the Plex Media Server app get to write any logs?
~/Library/Logs/Plex Media Server/

Check #2:

Open the app through terminal to see if the OS will give you an error message:

  1. Open Finder and navigate to /Applications/
  2. Right-Click the Plex Media Server.app and click Show Contents
  3. Navigate to Contents/MacOS/
  4. Open Terminal
  5. Drag the Plex Media Server executable from #3 into Terminal and press Enter
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Thanks for the reply.

For the logs, there isn’t even a Plex Media Server folder in the Libraries/Logs folder - it’s just not there despite PMS being installed as an application.

When I run Check #2 I get the following error:
Error: Unable to set up server: sqlite3_statement_backend::prepare: file is not a database for SQL: PRAGMA cache_size=2000 (N4soci10soci_errorE)

I’ve never run into this before, but at least I have an actual error message now. Have you had any experience with this issue before?

Thanks again

4

I understand this used to be an existing server but you went through a full uninstall/reinstall?

If it’s indeed a startover, you might attempt to delete the server data directory once more and give that another try. Make sure you check the actual user library folder (~/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/) – not the system library :wink:

1 Like
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THANK YOU!!! I completely forgot to delete from the user library folder. It’s working now - thanks again!!!

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