Server Version#: 1.15.3.876
Player Version#: 3.83.2
My plex server running on Debian has a bunch of .plexignore files to exclude certain content. They worked fine until now.
Plex service crapped itself, was non-responsive and I had to restart the service. Upon coming back, it suddenly found all the previous excluded material.
I restarted the machine and started a library scan and some of the ignored material went away, but not all.
Very annoying
I’ve never been able to get this feature to work, and I could really use it.
I tried removing the file, doing a library scan, and replacing the file, but the unwanted material remains.
This is infuriating. Plex respects my ignore file in the Movies directory, but not in TV.
I tried adding individual .plexignore files to directories and it still ignores them.
Turning debug logs on I see for example:
./Plex Media Server.log:Apr 23, 2019 11:42:52.069 [0x7f412affd700] DEBUG - [Scanners.bundle] Removing directory due to plexignore rule ...
but the item still appears in the Plex library.
PMS 1.15.3.876 does respect .plexignore
Example usage:
/vie/movies/
.plexignore
Movie 1 (2013)/
.
.
.
I have given, in both movie directories the specification as follows, without any reference to directories
T*
Please observe below with .plexignore in use and without
With (Transformers 6 is the movie “Bumblebee (2018)” which does have incorrect metadata)
Without (Normal) - Below see PMS readding the media
Thanks ChuckPA for putting together a detailed post with screenshots and examples. I appreciate it, though unfortunately it does not address the issue I am describing. My explanation may not have been entirely clear.
What I am facing is a situation where I had a working library, utilising .plexignore in my TV Series root and all was well. Plex crashed and I forced a restart. Upon restart, Plex started adding all that material listed in my .plexignore 
I think the problem comes back to ye olde Plex Dance™. Once the episode files are in Plex, it does not want to let go of them.
My solution was to do the Plex Dance™ using my .plexignore file as input for automation and to delete the offending listings through Plex. Upon moving the material back, Plex has not re-added them. 
This is, however, an incomplete solution because when doing the Plex Dance™ according to OttoKerner, it is a feature to not remove material from Plex, even when doing the Plex Dance™. There are some files that should be ignored but are still attached to a Season as a duplicate file version.
Any suggestion other than “simply delete the library as a whole and re-create it” would be appreciated.
Now that I understand your issue appears to be with the Television side, I will test further there.
I hope now it is clear that it works correctly for movies.
Should this be proven to work correctly for Television series, we will find out what’d not happening for you.
It took me but a few moments to verify it works as well for Television.
My shell console commands to create the following:
[chuck@lizum /vie.31]$ echo 'S*' > /vie/tv/.plexignore
[chuck@lizum /vie.32]$ echo 'S*' > /vie/tv2/.plexignore
[chuck@lizum /vie.33]$ echo 'S*' > /vie/tv3/.plexignore
[chuck@lizum /vie.34]$
Before:
After:
As you can see, any media file matching the regex S* has been removed
EDIT: Addendum. See it now automatically repopulating automatically when .plexignore is removed.
I think the issue is that .plexignore does not remove content already scanned by Plex. My issue is on Linux (in case that matters) with a photo library.
I have also not gotten it to work with any library type.
The plex user and group both own the .plexignore file.
As shown in my screen captures, it immediately removes them.
Where is your data stored in relation to the host and do you have:
When describing problems, it does help to know the details of the problem when first reporting the issue and not after time has been spent investigating.
To my knowlege, .plexignore was never intended or implemented for Photos. I will investigate and test appropriately.
Investigation / discussion with Engineering reveals:
./Release-Notes/1.9.3.en.txt:- (Scanner) Some plexignore rules were not being applied for photo libraries (#5866)
How should I understand this (as a non-native English speaker)? I use *plexignore to only add *.JPG files to my library while filtering out the RAW *CR2 files in the same folder. I do this in order to have every photo appearing only once and not twice. I honestely don’t understand how this is not the intend of that function. Could you give an example of how it should be used instead? And is there another solution to achieve the same result?
It worked perfectly for so long, I want to be positive it will work again soon 
I will see what I can learn. I do not use photos
Just wanted to chip in that I have the exact same use case and same issue that it stopped working a month or so ago.
I have cr2 files and jpg come off the camera for the same photo. I run a Powershell script to find “duplicate” names then output a list to enter into my .Plexignore
Feature to filter out duplicate raws would be welcomed if plexignore isn’t supposed to do this!
Windows (powershell) and Linux are different.
Linux is also case sensitive.
I am investigating Linux here.
Please hold off on Windows until such time as it is more appropriate.
FYI my plex is running on Linux (official docker image), the script I refer to is something that I run manually outside of this. I just coded it to generate the correct contents for the .Plexignore
the name is .plexignore not .Plexignore
I have verified, at least in my test cases, .plexignore works, which I show above.
I have asked engineering how plexignore should work with photos.
This having been stated, we need see where the misunderstanding is.
Please provide me some information other than “it’s broke” ? 
So some details: I’ve used for about two years this .plexignore script file, placed in the root folder of my photos library.
Ignore files with the extension “.cr2”
*.cr2Ignore folders
Back-up/*
gsdata/*
_others/*
The file systems contains all my folders with photo’s per event. Every picture is saved by my camera with the same “name” in both the *.jpg and *.cr2 extention. When I transfer my photos to my disk, this remains unchanged and it will look like this:
As Plex is natively compatible with both file formats it will scan and add the picture twice to the library. Meaning that when I upload 50 photos (= 100 files on the disk), plex will show 100 photos in the library, but all doubles.
As this is not really ideal, the plex ignore was a nice workaround so that the scanner would ignore the *.cr2 and only add the *.jpg to its index.
As mentioned above, this functionality has stopped working some releases ago.
I hope this helps.
Yes, that helps.
When I get to it (I’m making a note for mid-week 'ish timeframe), I will write this up.
Sorry I can’t get to it sooner. It’s almost 3am as I write this now.
