Ver 1.20.2.3370, Win10 Home.
PMS has been rock-solid for a long time but lately it bails frequently. Tried to make sense of the logs, but they’re in a language I don’t speak.
Would hugely appreciate some smart person giving me some clues about what to do next.
Thank you.
Plex Media Server Logs_2020-09-29_13-41-02.zip (1.5 MB)
Server Version#: 1.20.3.3483
Windows 10 Home 64-bit v 1909
Intel i3-6100 3.70GHz
Plex Pass
I’ve read the rules, followed the instructions, then posted my problem but … just silence (33 views and 0 responses, so far). How do I get someone to look at the logs and give some hint of what’s going wrong?
My Plex server app was rock-solid for years. Now, it just exits frequently (seldom lasts over an hour streaming music or video, but even with nothing going on, it still exits). The logs don’t show ERROR or WARNING around the exits, just lines of DEBUG that give me no clue what I can do to fix this.
Here are today’s logs: Plex Media Server Logs_2020-10-26_13-26-03.zip (2.2 MB)
Could someone who can understand logs please take a look and advise?
Looks like Plex is crashing when you start some playback session on your Apple TV that requires a transcode.
What Apple TV model, tvOS version and Plex for tvOS client are that?
Do you get those crashes only when you play music on the Apple TV or are those crashes also happening when you try playing some other media?
This is producing a significant number of error messages about the transcoder failing to clean up some directories on your Windows machine.
Apple TV: A1625, tvOS 13.4.8, not sure how to find the Plex player data for it.
I got just one crash while using the Apple TV yesterday, but tons of crashes over weeks with other players - mostly Win10 apps on several laptops I use around the house as local music (not video) players, and an iPad. Sometimes PMS just crashes when no streaming is happening.
I saw all the transcoder messages, but of course don’t know how to interpret them. Given that I’m getting the same results with multiple players on different operating systems, is a generic transcode problem possible?
Are you seeing the crash dump reports?
Really appreciate your help.
This sounds significant. What can be done to pursue this further? How can I “encourage” the transcoder to do a proper cleanup? Is the transcoder a single thing or a set of them, depending on what a given player is requesting? (Pardon my ignorance: I’m an engineer, but my degree isn’t in Plex.)
New crash info: with the help of a friend, stressed PMS with simo audio and video streams. Logs are attached. Prior to this, PMS had been streaming to a single audio player for nearly 24 hours without incident.
Crash Reports.zip (3.2 MB) Plex Media Server Logs_20-10-28_10-28.zip (3.4 MB)
Hope this helps.
PS:
Followed the rules and captured crash files before restarting PMS.
tom80h (or any gurus reading):
Would really appreciate some help in finding the causes of the crashes. Latest logs (above) should show several exits. To recap: almost all come when streaming music to Windows 10 or iOS players, but that’s because that’s what I do most. Crashes have occurred during music, video (usually Apple TV), or just idle time.
If transcoding has something to do with it, what should I do next to troubleshoot or fix? After years of rock-solid PMS performance, frequent and random crashes have become the norm. I’ll try anything you can suggest. Need to kill this bug.
Thanks.
I’ve been asking a bit around.
Your logs show a number of internal http/500 server errors which implies something might be wrong with your setup.
Are you logged in as the same Windows user under which you had installed your server? This could explain why Plex might have trouble cleaning up some temporary folders.
Oct 28, 2020 09:14:06.064 [95752] ERROR - [Transcode] Metadata /system/agents/media/get request failed with code: 500: http://127.0.0.1:51651/system/agents/media/get?guid=
You could try to manually clean up some of the folders used by Plex to see if the issues are related to some rogue files/folders:
\Plex Media Server\Plug-in Support\Caches\Plex Media Server\Plug-in Support\Data\Plex Media Server\Cache\Photo TranscoderC:\Users\Media Server\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Cache\Transcode\Sessions…
I built the server from scratch. Only one account from the beginning to the present.
Does “clear all caches” mean delete all subfolders under, e.g., \Plex Media Server\Plug-in Support\Caches? Or the data within the subfolders?
The C:\Users\Media Server\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Cache\Transcode\Sessions was empty.
I’d assume that error handling is pretty robust for Plex after all these years, and that most problems encountered are just pushed aside. What are some of the things that can happen in my case that actually makes Plex give up and exit? (I’m not using “crash” here because I don’t see any messages in the logs that actually say “Help! I’m crashing!”)
I did learn something interesting yesterday. I was playing a music playlist when my local W10 player stopped with something like a “content not found.” Checked, and sure enough: the path to that particular track was bad. Fixed all that and resumed playing.
Point is: Plex found something wrong and told me about it - didn’t crash or exit. What could be the difference?
Eager to continue learning. Thanks.
Did all that.
The …\Cache\Transcode\Sessions was empty.
There were two files each in the … \Plug-in Support\Data subfolders: HTTP Cookies and Stored Values. Deleted both for each subfolder (could I have just deleted the subfolders instead? Are they generated as needed?).
The …\Cache\Photo Transcoder had hundreds of subfolders and thousands of files. I took a chance and deleted all the subfolders. Didn’t see any future in individually opening and deleting content for hundreds of folders. Was that the intent?
Restarted PMS and am monitoring.
Well, seemed to have found the problem and fixed it. The helpful link was:
Some months ago I had installed my long-time VPN app, Easy-Hide-IP, on my Media Server. The crashes started after that - not so obvious that it was clear there was a cause and effect. Sometimes there’d be a week between crashes, other times they would be continuous. Now it’s obvious that the crashes happened when the VPN became active and accessed its DLL.
Since I removed Easy-Hide-IP the server’s been solid - and I’ve been exercising it continually. I would recommend that the helpful folks here include this link as an automatic response to anyone experiencing mystery crashes.
Thanks to all who helped.
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