in the VM, what do you get for this?
[chuck@lizum ~.2010]$ sudo sysctl -a | grep inotify | grep fs.inotify
fs.inotify.max_queued_events = 1048576
fs.inotify.max_user_instances = 1048576
fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 1048576
[chuck@lizum ~.2011]$
Total media files, let me see, hard to tell because a lot of the files have extra BS in them, id say around media files 2,000, total files in all my media folders 7,031
jayecin@plex-2:~$ sudo sysctl -a | grep inotify | grep fs.inotify
fs.inotify.max_queued_events = 16384
fs.inotify.max_user_instances = 128
fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 60964
Can you afford to bump the VM’s memory to 16GB or 32GB ?
You are Definitely pushing the limit there at 8GB.
(On ProxMox, I use a container because it doesn’t waste resources. VMs are terrible wasteful)
How skilled are you at Linux (command line) ?
Really 8GB not enough? Yeah I can push it up to 16-24GB. My Linux is alright in that I can follow directions and have some understanding.
Here’s my container. It was created by TTECK helper scripts
The machine only has 8GB of RAM and still is blazing.
I have some 40K files indexed into it at the moment.
See the memory usage difference ? Mine is not using hardly anything
I wonder if yours is swapping
The other thing we can do is run DBRepair on your machine and try to improve DB performance.
yeah thats a massive difference, how come? I believe wseda22 was running his in dockers and experiencing the same issue. This high memory usage seems like a rather new thing, I used to run this server on 2GB of memory like a year ago. Its mostly only me using it, maybe 1-4 concurrent streams max.
For some reason , i don’t know why, there are recent reports of proxmox having issues.
Here this is, runing a LXC and being without issue.
Steps?
- Run DBRepair to see if we catch any low-hanging fruit ?
- look at container vs VM ?
So my friend was having this issue on ProxMox with a similar setup as mine, he moved his Plex to a direct Windows 11 install, so no hypervisor and is still having the issue. We both started having the issue at the same time, which was around early to mid summer.
how big are your database files ?
(ls -lah of the Databases directory please)
sudo ls -lah “/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Databases/”
total 1.4G
drwxr-xr-x 2 plex plex 4.0K Sep 14 03:01 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 plex plex 4.0K Feb 17 2025 ..
-rw-r–r-- 1 plex plex 15M Sep 14 03:00 com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db
-rw-r–r-- 1 plex plex 200M Sep 3 02:00 com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db-2025-09-03
-rw-r–r-- 1 plex plex 201M Sep 6 02:03 com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db-2025-09-06
-rw-r–r-- 1 plex plex 201M Sep 9 02:03 com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db-2025-09-09
-rw-r–r-- 1 plex plex 13M Sep 12 02:05 com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db-2025-09-12
-rwxr-xr-x 1 plex plex 201M Sep 9 06:29 com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db.old
-rw-r–r-- 1 plex plex 32K Sep 14 03:01 com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db-shm
-rw-r–r-- 1 plex plex 0 Sep 14 03:01 com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db-wal
-rwxr-xr-x 1 plex plex 109M Sep 14 03:00 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db
-rwxr-xr-x 1 plex plex 0 Feb 17 2025 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db-2023-06-16-tmp
-rwxr-xr-x 1 plex plex 0 Feb 17 2025 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db-2023-07-25-tmp
-rwxr-xr-x 1 plex plex 0 Feb 17 2025 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db-2024-02-14-tmp
-rwxr-xr-x 1 plex plex 0 Feb 17 2025 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db-2024-02-20-tmp
-rw-r–r-- 1 plex plex 0 Aug 25 02:02 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db-2025-08-25-tmp
-rw-r–r-- 1 plex plex 108M Sep 3 02:00 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db-2025-09-03
-rw-r–r-- 1 plex plex 108M Sep 6 02:03 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db-2025-09-06
-rw-r–r-- 1 plex plex 109M Sep 9 02:03 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db-2025-09-09
-rw-r–r-- 1 plex plex 108M Sep 12 02:05 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db-2025-09-12
-rwxr-xr-x 1 plex plex 32K Sep 14 03:14 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db-shm
-rwxr-xr-x 1 plex plex 713K Sep 14 03:14 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db-wal
** Moderator edit for legibility
Need a minute to research please. BRB
Thats fine, I need to call it for the night. I’ll follow up with anything needed tomorrow. Thank you for taking the time to help me with this, really appreciate it.
Looks like VM vs Container issue.
I don’t use Proxmox enough to know why
Tomorrow, would you consider copying the Plex server from the VM and loading it up into a LXC on the same machine (like I have) ?
I’ll help you through it.
Yeah I can take a look later tonight around 8PM. I just doubled the ram from 8GB to 16GB last night. I watched maybe 3 shows during that time.
FWIW, during my testing I had moved Plex from container to native installation on my mini PC (Beelink EQ12) and was able to reproduce the issue.
Is there anything I can provide of value?
VERY interesting.
My Beelink S12 Pro (N100 CPU) with Ubuntu native does not have the issue.
What do you get when you
root@pve:~# sysctl -a | grep fs.inotify
fs.inotify.max_queued_events = 8388608
fs.inotify.max_user_instances = 65536
fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 4194304
root@pve:~# free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 15773 2818 11708 57 1604 12955
Swap: 8191 0 8191
root@pve:~#
fs.inotify.max_queued_events = 16384
fs.inotify.max_user_instances = 128
fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 123785
looks like RAM dropped down on its own. Still setup for 16GB total.
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 7212 501 238 2 6472 6403
Swap: 0 0 0
Not sure if your question was for me or Jay, but here’s what I got:
sysctl -a | grep fs.inotify
fs.inotify.max_queued_events = 16384
fs.inotify.max_user_instances = 128
fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 123866
sudo free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 15767 1547 3413 12 11552 14220
Swap: 4095 0 4095
Not sure how relevant this will be, but one of the things I tried over the weekend was changing all the tasks here to be scheduled as opposed to when media is added. I did notice that the issue seemed to be far worse after having just added new media. On Friday I added a new show and tried to watch it immediately, the issue kept presenting itself every 5 minutes or so to the point I couldnt even watch the show. After setting everything to a scheduled task and attempting to watch it again the following night, it worked flawlessly.
I think I found a PMS bug and am looking to confirm.
How big is / file system (df -h /)
