Plex not finding libraries after restore from time machine and Big Sur update

General Discussions
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Hello, I was recently updating my iMac 2018 to big sur and there was an error from which the computer couldn’t recover. We had to completely reformat the computer, install Big Sur and then restore my data from time machine. Everything seemed fine until I opened Plex and realized it isn’t finding any of my libraries I had set up. I’ve spent a lot of time setting up some big libraries and renaming things/building collections/playlists etc, so I don’t want to start over.

I checked to make sure these two files/folders were restored and in the same location:

~/Library/Preferences/

com.plexapp.plexmediaserver.plist file

~/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/

And it’s reading my drives fine, so I can’t figure out why it’s not pulling in my libraries?

Any help would be huge.

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2

The rebuild of your Mac probably resulted in a different/new machine identifier.
You should be able to delete the related keys from ~/Library/Preferences/com.plexapp.plexmediaserver.plist (with your PMS stopped).

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In addition to Tom’s suggestion (if it doesn’t resolve the issue), you may also want to try this procedure:

Try it with the most recent Plex database backup from before the rebuild in your Time Machine backups. That is, open Time Machine, select the day before the OS reinstall, navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Databases/, and pick the most recent database backup files (see the procedure above for which files to grab).

Hopefully that makes sense, given recursive nature of the backup terminology.

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Thanks for the quick responses all.
Question for Tom - do i just navigate to the current ~/Library/Preferences/com.plexapp.plexmediaserver.plist and delete that file? Simple as that? Or do i also need to paste back in that com.plexapp.plexmediaserver.plist file from before the restore/update in my time machine backup to that location?

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It should be ok to delete the individual key/value pairs referring to the old machine identifier (there’s 2-3 of them). If you delete the file, you’ll need to claim the server anew (after deleting the file and restarting the server, open http://127.0.0.1:32400/web in a local browser to access the bundled version of Plex Web and sign-in to your account under Settings > [Server Name] > General).

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Hey apologies for for my lack of knowledge here - but i don’t know how to find/delete the individual key/value pairs referring to the old machine. I’m not sure how to edit that file or how to find the right key pairs inside it and i’m scared i’ll delete the wrong thing.

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Ah… I see your point.
I have Xcode and some other developer tools installed… those will allow editing the .plist files just like a regular XML file, while opening the file in TextEdit makes it look a little more creepy :wink:
It might be easiest to stop the PMS, delete the file and re-claim the server anew (as described above).

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You can also use the macOS defaults command to edit property files as well:

Use defaults read com.plexapp.plexmediaserver to read all current values. You can then use defaults delete com.plexapp.plexmediaserver keyname to delete a particular value. You can also use defaults write com.plexapp.plexmediaserver keyname value to write a new value to a particular key.

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9

You can do this in Terminal.app without a ton of pain.

Stop Plex.

Do this to get a list of what’s in there:

% defaults read com.plexapp.plexmediaserver

Then do this to remove the ...Identifier keys and the old token.

% defaults delete com.plexapp.plexmediaserver AnonymousMachineIdentifier
% defaults delete com.plexapp.plexmediaserver CertificateUUID           
% defaults delete com.plexapp.plexmediaserver MachineIdentifier
% defaults delete com.plexapp.plexmediaserver ProcessedMachineIdentifier
% defaults delete com.plexapp.plexmediaserver PlexOnlineToken
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Don’t think I’ve ever heard binary garbage described as “creepy” before, but I love it. Ghost in the machine!

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ok i deleted the ~/Library/Preferences/com.plexapp.plexmediaserver.plist file and reclaimed the server but it doesn’t seem like anything has changed.

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Try re linking the smallest Library to your storage volume and check your Volumes Permissions are Read and Write

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What would happen if I just replaced the current Plex Server Database folder and the current .plist file with the ones I copied from my time machine backup? Would that solve it without me having to go into terminal?

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