Absolutely accurate, I found that DVR recordings indeed do use the trans-code location for creation of the file. While I’ve not run into any instance yet where a recording or trans-code/recording combination has run me out of storage (10gb of allocated ram) I’d caution anyone not able to dedicate closer to 25gb of ram or more depending on user load / number of shows recording in parallel.
1 Like
I too have my Plex media server installed on an SSD. I have a ton of RAM to use and have allocated 32 GB to my ubuntu VM which hosts my Plex server. I have a 20GB ram disk mounted at boot at /media/ramdisk which I point to for temporary transcoding in the Plex GUI. Reading above, this ramdisk location is only used for streaming transcodes, right?
I don’t do it often, but I do occasionally use the optimize and sync features. Reading above, I am a bit dismayed to discover that the sync and optimize transcoding temp directory is:
/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Cache/Transcode/
which is in my ubuntu VM, on my SSD and thus potentially shredding it with read/write cycles.
So I mount my ram disk at boot with this in my /etc/fstab file:
none /media/ramdisk tmpfs nodev,nosuid,noexec,nodiratime,size=20480M 0 0
Has anyone tried mounting the ram disk at boot to the following directory?:
/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Cache/Transcode
using the following in the /etc/fstab for a 40GB ram disk:
none /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\040Support/Plex\040Media\040Server/Cache/Transcode tmpfs nodev,nosuid,noexec,nodiratime,size=40960M 0 0
(note the escaped space characters using \040 instead of spaces in the fstab file)
would that break anything?
Sean
I can verify that loading a ramdisk on boot of an ubuntu server VM into the /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Cache/Transcode location works great if you run your server on an SSD and want to avoid the read-write burden of transcodes on the SSD.
You then leave the temporary transcode directory in the webGUI settings-network tab empty.
I have set mine up with a whopping 40GB ramdisk, but I suspect around 25GB would work fine if you limit simultaneous transcodes to 4 or something reasonable.
Interesting behavior – when transcoding for sync or optimization, new folders get created on the ramdisk location, but nothing gets written into them. The sync and optimization tasks complete successfully though, so the files get written somewhere… maybe Plex uses swap space or /tmp ??? i looked in /tmp and didn’t see anything though.
I am no longer getting the errors about not being able to start a transcode or DVR recording due to not enough disk space though… very happy about that!
Sean
1 Like
