Plex Promox LXC Container leaking RAM

Plex Media Server
1

Server Version#: 1.40.1.8227
Since install a little more than a month ago Plex has slowly leaked memory. The latest version did not stop the leak.
I have found resizing the RAM for the LXC container will free the leaked memory without a restart or Plex. It has not run out of RAM so I do not know what will happen.

The image is from the Proxmox summary of the LXC. The only thing in the container is Plex.

image
image1297×421 35.7 KB

Plex Media Server Logs_2024-03-18_22-29-35.zip (4.3 MB)

2

May I ask, How you’re “resizing memory” ?

I ask because of how things get reported. Please look here.

  1. It looks like PMS is using 164 GB of RAM when it’s not using anything near that much but the File Buffer RAM usage is high (as it should be)

Screenshot from 2024-03-19 01-24-46
Screenshot from 2024-03-19 01-24-461097×456 72.2 KB

  1. If you do the following, does the memory utilization also return to normal ?
sudo sync; echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
sudo sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

You might want to do it this way

sudo bash
echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_cache
exit
3
  1. An LXC can be dynamically resized. Both CPU and RAM.
  2. I see what you mean, I should have looked at the results of free.
free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            3072         807        2136           0         128        2264
Swap:              0           0           0

As far as the original question is concerned that is solved. I should have known better. I will check in a week and see if this holds true, and I suspect it will. Thank you.
My next question is why is the cache growing when there is no activity? I have checked the play history and during the night with no usage more RAM is used.

4

To share -

I use LXCs instead of VMs.
Well versed in what I can do which was why I asked :slight_smile:

Screenshot from 2024-03-19 19-35-22
Screenshot from 2024-03-19 19-35-22957×522 29.3 KB

PMS is almost always doing something.

  • Library refreshes are on timers
  • DVR / EPG updates are scheduled
  • Task Scheduler has a whole bunch of things that run overnight.

Are you running this on a machine with only 4 GB of RAM ?
If you’ve restricted the container to 4GB then I recommend you do what we recommend for all NAS processors – 8GB and forget about it.

5

Lots of things running an Proxmox, so all systems get the RAM they need. I tested Plex and I can successfully play 8 different 4k movies at the same time with 7 transcoding and that only needs about 2.5GB of RAM. My highest known real world session count is only 5.
I have plenty of experience doing performance tuning and after my testing I know what happens when it runs out of RAM starting a session. I will up it if needed.
Not checking the output of free before posting still bugs me, should not have missed that.

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