I still get the issue, but I seem to have completely resolved it by running this daily. I’ve given up on receiving any sort of help. No one on the Plex staff seems to care.
I’m not sure why it’s so hard to ask whichever dev is familiar with the database what purpose all the excess entries in the “taggings” table are used for and why so many trash entries are being created.
I have repeatedly been able to reproduce the issue and have repeatedly fixed the issue by deleting them.
This routinely deleted 100k+ entries, especially after many new library additions + PMM changing posters.
docker cp plex:/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/ /opt/plexsql
cd "/opt/plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Databases"
# Count and print the number of rows that will be deleted
/opt/plexsql/Plex\ Media\ Server --sqlite com.plexapp.plugins.library.db "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM taggings WHERE tag_id IN (SELECT tag_id FROM taggings WHERE text LIKE '%image.tmdb.org%' OR text LIKE '%artworks.thetvdb.com%' OR text LIKE '%metadata-static.plex.tv%');"```
I assume that snippet just gives you a count of the entries you will delete and you have something to the effect of →
"DELETE FROM taggings WHERE tag_id IN (SELECT tag_id FROM taggings WHERE text LIKE '%image.tmdb.org%' OR text LIKE '%artworks.thetvdb.com%' OR text LIKE '%metadata-static.plex.tv%');"
After that?
Is that safe to do while plex is running or do you have to shut it down first?
I ran the count on mine just to see how many there are->
sqlite> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM taggings WHERE tag_id IN (SELECT tag_id FROM taggings WHERE text LIKE '%image.tmdb.org%' OR text LIKE '%artworks.thetvdb.com%' OR text LIKE '%metadata-static.plex.tv%');
293929
Is that a lot? normal? It seemed to be about 10% of the entries in the taggings table… I guess I still don’t understand how this small percentage could make responses take so long, but we don’t have a clear picture of what is being run when the includeRelated=1 query param is being sent.
I ran the delete anyway. I’ll have to wait to see how fast it builds back up when adding new content.
I do see when I change a poster on Toy Story 4 I got 173 new entries, but it didn’t become slow/un-playable. Also the choices for the available posters in the edit menu were no longer available after running the delete (which I assume the taggings table is providing the urls there) Typically I just use the “refresh metadata” option when I find a slow to load movie and that resolves it. So its interesting that removing these taggings entries and refreshing the metadata both work… not sure if there is some index being added when refreshing metadata or what. I guess we won’t know unless a dev at plex who understand the db schema better takes a look…
