Plex Medis Server Won't Start

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

So, here is the deal, about 3 weeks ago Plex Media Server was working just fine on my mac. Then I installed an update and since then Plex Media Server won’t start on my mac. I tried the version that was released on or about 9/23 and the latest version of PMS dated beginning of October. None of them will start the media server.

I have gone through the uninstall instructions several times and none of it works. I recently updated to the latest Mac OS, Catolina thinking that would help, but it didn’t. So just looking for some help and guidance on figuring out what is going on with PMS and Mac OS.

I have exhausted all google searches, so chances are if you link to an article that was published within the last year I know about it and I have tried what is in the article and it didn’t work. The only thing I haven’t done is the log files, because none of the information in the log file makes sense and I don’t know enough about what PMS does on startup to help diagnose the problem.

2

is it creating new server logs at all when you try to start it?

3

No it isn’t. I checked ~/library/logs and I don’t see an entry for Plex Media Server.

4

Ok, so I took another look and there is a crash report in the following folder generated from the plex media serverr:

~/library/logs/diagnosticreports

Let me know and I can send someone the .crash files. I really can’t make heads or tails out of it.

thanks

ds

5

You can just drop it in here or you can message it to me but I don’t think there is anything really sensitive in them.

you might have to zip it up before dropping in text entry window

6

Bigwheel, were you able to make any sense out of the error file that i sent?

7

can you try to run the current build of 1.18.0 which is 1.18.0.1944, you seem to be running a slightly older build 1.18.0.1913

you can get current at https://www.plex.tv/media-server-downloads/

the crash logs show the app is missing some internal files it need to run for some reason. do you have any antivirus or something running?

8

Bigwheel. I downloaded and installed the latest version of PMS and it is working again. I did have a virus scanner running on my Mac called Cylance, but I had that running for almost 10 months and PMS didn’t mind. I even updated the PMS app several times, while i had Cylance installed, during the year without any issues. The update i tried to install 25 days ago must have triggered something in Cylance that Cylance didn’t like.

Odd though, because I had thought of that and had uninstalled Cylance before trying to install the version of PMS released on 10/1 and 10/8. So, I suspect the culprit is probably some interaction between Cylance and PMS applications released over the past month.

I had suspected that I probably don’t need Cylance, but it might be worth Plex’s time to go down that rabbit hole and investigate this interaction between Cylance and PMS. I got Cylance as part of one of those Mac app bundles that seem to be pretty popular. So, there might be other PMS mac users out there that might run into the same problem that I ran into.

9

I’m glad your PMS is up and running again.

Mine is not. I have updated to the latest version and when I try starting PMS, I can see the little symbol for a brief moment but then it vanishes immediately. I tried to find any logs, but couldn’t. I never had this problem before. Any ideas what it could be?

Thanks for helping

10

Anyone any ideas? The PMS quits itself immediately after starting. The little symbol in my task line pops up and vanishes after less than a second.

Thank you

11

do you have crash logs?

12

As of today I have same problem. Mac running El Capitan.

13

Do you have crash logs?

14

I was looking under application support>plex media server. No crash logs are showing. The little plex icon shows for a few seconds then gone. I’ll look around to see if crash logs are stored anywhere else.

15

Might be some in the logs folder. more info here https://support.plex.tv/articles/201455336-crash-logs-plex-media-server/#toc-1

16

Ah…there was a log. Database corruption. Where the sql script is looking at max(play_queue_generators is malformed.

This a situation where I need to just wipe plex off including support files and redownload?

17

There is no need to go nuclear IMO as a first option

if you have database backups being made just restore an older one.

if you don’t have backups you can try to repair

18

Hey I appreciate your help. I found the dB under plugin support. Removed it and reopened. It recreated and I’m back in. Looks like it needs to rebuild but I’m ok with that :blush:

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19

Thanks everyone, it was definitely a corrupted database thing. Just deleted it and PMS started as nothing had happened before.

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