Plex Server (windows) don't populate log file

General Discussions
1

Hello,
So I have a problem with Plex but to start investigating, I would need to see the Plex log file.
I understand the log file is located in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Plex Media Server\logs
in there there is only one file:
Plex Media Server.log
this file was created and last updated on the 23rd of May.
If I delete the file, plex won’t create a new one, if I keep it, Plex won’t update it.

In Plex server, I go to Settings -> Web -> Debug and the setting “Debug Level” is set to ‘enabled’
that didn’t enable server log file, but maybe it was not meant to.

what else can I try?

thanks,

Mat.

2

@Admin Amsterdam said:
In Plex server, I go to Settings → Web → Debug and the setting “Debug Level” is set to ‘enabled’
that didn’t enable server log file, but maybe it was not meant to.
That is the log settings for the Web App, not PMS.

You want Settings / Server / General. There are 2 check boxed for logging (debug and verbose). PMS should always be logging critical information. You would enable either debug or verbose if you need more info logged.

If there is nothing in your log folder, something is wrong. Do you have Plex running under a different user, if so, the PMS logs will be in that user’s %localappdata% folder. If you are running PMS as a service, the logs will be in that user’s folder.

3

Hi,
Unfortunately, Settings / Server is not available to me, I get this error:
Server settings are unavailable.
this error is the very reason why I wanted to have log files in the first place.
Plex doesn’t run as a service (I don’t see it in the windows services)
and the user that installed Plex is the logged-in user.

4

How web address are you usign to access your server? Are you on the machine itself, another computer on the same network, or a remote computer outside your network?

5

Hi,
I’m on the machine itself (windows 2012 R2) that runs Plex server.
I normally access the plex server page by right-clicking the plex icon in the notification area and select “Open Plex…” This opens a page in my default web browser (chrome). the URL is “http://localhost:32400/web/index.html”

6

Hello,
sorry for bumping up this thread but my plex server is still broken.
Is there a way to enable creating log file via windows registry or changing a file…?

7

Hello Plex company,

Do you have any sort of support?
Is there a page to raise ticket?
Is it free support or do I need to pay a fee maybe?
I’m lost here.

8

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I’m still not sure what would allow Plex to run but not generate log files. If you haven’t already, please try upgrading to the latest version of PMS. Where the server logs should be, there should also be a “pms-installer.log” file that is generated during the installation. Can you provide me that file? It may be that PMS did not install fully and hopefully this file is generated for you and we can find a problem.

9

Also please check this registry area and see if you have an item named LocalAppDataPath

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Plex, Inc.\Plex Media Server
10

It’s also worth checking with Process Monitor to see if you get something like an access denied writing to the log

11

Hi,

thanks for all the responses:
so I started with the easier: the registry.
LocalAppDataPath exist and its value is
I:
on that drive I have indeed this root folder:
I:\Plex Media Server

Even more interesting is that there is a log folder there:
I:\Plex Media Server\Logs
with plenty of files created/updated 2 weeks ago.
so it seems I may have told Plex to store log files in that folder instead.

so this ticket can be closed and I’ll post another thread to investigate why the server is no longer “working”

thanks