Plex Service Fails to Start

Plex Media Server
1

Server Version#: Any
Player Version#: Any

Ubuntu Server 18.04. This server has been running without issue for years. Rebooted the server and the Plex Service failed to come online on boot. I’ve rebooted. Tried to start manually. Tried downgrading to many different versions. No logs have been written since the service failure started. Nothing changed on this host other than a reboot.

root@PlexServer:/# systemctl status plexmediaserver.service
● plexmediaserver.service - Plex Media Server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2020-07-13 20:57:29 EDT; 11min ago
  Process: 1892 ExecStart=/bin/sh -c  export PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_INFO_VENDOR="$(grep ^NAME= /etc/os-release | awk -F= "{pr
  Process: 1884 ExecStartPre=/bin/sh -c /usr/bin/test -d "${PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_APPLICATION_SUPPORT_DIR}" || /bin/mkdir -p Main PID: 1892 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Jul 13 20:57:29 PlexServer systemd[1]: plexmediaserver.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
Jul 13 20:57:29 PlexServer systemd[1]: plexmediaserver.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 3.
Jul 13 20:57:29 PlexServer systemd[1]: Stopped Plex Media Server.
Jul 13 20:57:29 PlexServer systemd[1]: plexmediaserver.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Jul 13 20:57:29 PlexServer systemd[1]: plexmediaserver.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jul 13 20:57:29 PlexServer systemd[1]: Failed to start Plex Media Server.
root@PlexServer:/#
2 
grep plex /etc/passwd
ls -la /var/lib/plexmediaserver

Also include tar.gz of Logs directory please.

3 
root@PlexServer:~# grep plex /etc/passwd
plex:x:111:117::/var/lib/plexmediaserver:/bin/bash
plexpy:x:113:65534::/home/plexpy:/bin/false
root@PlexServer:~# ls -la /var/lib/plexmediaserver/
total 24
drwxrwxr-x  5 plex plex 4096 Feb  3  2019  .
drwxr-xr-x 48 root root 4096 Jan  8  2020  ..
drwxrwxr-x  3 plex plex 4096 Feb  1  2017 'Application Support'
-rw-------  1 plex plex  227 Apr  9 17:04  .bash_history
drwxr-xr-x  4 plex plex 4096 Feb  1  2017  Library
drwx------  2 plex plex 4096 Feb  2  2017  .ssh

I cleared the log dir while troubleshooting. So it’s still empty:

root@PlexServer:/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Logs# ls
'PMS Plugin Logs'
root@PlexServer:/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Logs#
4

ok…

sudo chown -R plex:plex /var/lib/plexmediaserver

then restart it

5

Thanks that worked. Do you have any idea why though? As in, how would the permissions have changed during a reboot?

6

Something was in the directory structure and change the ownership.
Nothing would have changed during a simple reboot.

7

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