Plex Server crashed on Mint 19.1

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Server Version#: 1.15.4.993
Player Version#: N/A

At 14:33:26 time, my Plex server just… died. Only had 1 friend on there watching something and he said his Fire TV popped up an error that the server wasn’t reachable. I logged onto the box and sure enough, Plex wasn’t opening. It -LOOKED- like the service was running but was kinda brain dead. I tried stopping/restarting it but no go. I bounced the box and everything is back up and running. Looking through syslog, I spotted this:

May  4 14:33:26 server-pc sh[2485]: double free or corruption (!prev)
May  4 14:33:26 server-pc sh[2485]: ****** PLEX MEDIA SERVER CRASHED, CRASH REPORT WRITTEN: /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Crash Reports/1.15.4.993-bb4a2cb6c/PLEX MEDIA SERVER/431edfc5-0479-ab8e-09ed658b-56566946.dmp

I think this is the first time I’ve ever had Plex die on me like that so maybe it’s nothing and just a random fluke?! Attaching log files.
Plex Media Server Logs_2019-05-04_16-13-33.zip (2.1 MB)

2

It’s a known bug (sorry). They are working on it.

3

@ChuckPa No worries, thank for the info. Out of curiosity, can you tell me the name of the bug or what condition causes it? I was toying with the idea of moving my Plex server to Antergos. Maybe a different distro would help?

4

Just as the log states.

PMS “free()” a block of memory.
The runtime library caught the error in that that block had already been “free()” somewhere else.
This should never happen.

Moving to unsupported distros leads to problems. We’ve never tested on many of them.
If you stick with the mainstream, you will have a better experience.
The biggest issue is the kernel.

5

@ChuckPa I tried all the sanctioned distros in your Linux section and had problems with each of them. The problems were outside of Plex.

Since this is the very first time I’ve encountered that problem, I guess I won’t worry toooooo much about it. Can you recommend a way I could maybe detect Plex crashing like that in the future and then automating a system reboot?

6

If you have autouploading of the crash reports to plex enabled, that’s the first step.

The next would be a cron job, set to fire once a minute.

Something like this.

  if [ $(pgrep "Plex Media Server" | wc -l ) -eq 0 ]; then
    systemctl restart plexmediaserver
  fi
7

@ChuckPa Ok, I’ll toss that cron job on my system but when it crashed, I’m pretty sure I tried restarting the service and the CLI just…hung. I had to bounce the box to get it going again. But I’ll add it nonetheless.

Thanks

9

Plex Media Server Beta 1.16.0.1220-147963d87 has just been released with a fix for crashes manifesting themselves as double free or heap corruptions

See Release Notice Plex Media Server

  • (Playback) The server could crash when a transcode session finished. These manifested as heap corruptions or double-frees (#9801 #9883 #9938 #9940 #9950)
10

Thanks for the update on this issue!

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