Plexmediaserver has filled my root partition

[Plocmstart]

I’ve had Plex Media Server running on Fedora 22 for quite awhile now, and update it frequently when new versions are available. I can no longer update though because my root partition is about 100% full. From what I can tell Plex is now using /var/lib/plexmediaserver is using around 25GB of space.
Transcode is a separate disk.
Media is stored on a NAS mounted as NFS.

Why is Plex using so much space? Is there a way I can reduce the usage? Or am I stuck creating a new VM with more space (and recreating all my libraries again)?

[root@plex /]# du -m /var | sort -nr | head -30
29442 /var
25878 /var/lib
25657 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server
25657 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support
25657 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library
25657 /var/lib/plexmediaserver
21462 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost
21462 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media
3021 /var/log
2961 /var/log/journal/2b183e7150804d51ac69ac149f5f4bcb
2961 /var/log/journal
1936 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Cache
1883 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Cache/PhotoTranscoder
1857 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Metadata
1795 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Metadata/Movies
1672 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/1
1590 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/9
1569 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/0
1510 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/b
1441 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/a
1434 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/4
1344 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/e
1332 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/2
1288 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/d
1270 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/5
1246 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/6
1224 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/f
1215 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/3
1152 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/c
1131 /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/7

[root@plex /]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /dev
tmpfs 3.9G 184K 3.9G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 3.9G 1.4M 3.9G 1% /run
tmpfs 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mapper/fedora-root 36G 34G 308M 100% /
tmpfs 3.9G 160K 3.9G 1% /tmp
/dev/sdb1 118G 2.6G 110G 3% /mnt/transcode
/dev/sda1 477M 133M 315M 30% /boot
//192.168.1.35/temp 7.0T 22G 6.9T 1% /nas/temp
192.168.1.35:mnt/VOL0/Videos 9.5T 2.6T 6.9T 27% /nas/video

[ChuckPa]

Depending on whether you allowed fedora to do the default allocation or not, you got a reasonable root.
To add further insult to their frugality, if you have BIF file (chapter images) turned on, you’ve now a LOT of space in use.

It’s very easy to move all this out of /var for good and be done.

I also use Fedora. In spite of the 128 GB I allocated for root, I don’t want PMS there. It’s on /home because it’s data, not OS software.

I recommend moving it:

(as root)

systemctl stop plexmediaserver
mkdir /home/plexdir
chown plex:plex /home/plexdir
cd /var/lib/plexmediaserver
tar cf - . | (cd /home/plexdir ; tar xf -)    # This will take a while so be patient while it copies the whole thing

mkdir /etc/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service.d    # Create an override for the service which will persist 

Using your favorite text editor (gedit is good), create /etc/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service.d/override.conf with the following contents

[chuck@lizum /etc.109]$ cat /etc/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service.d/override.conf 
#
#
[Service]
Environment="PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_APPLICATION_SUPPORT_DIR=/home/plexdir/Library/Application Support"
#
#
[chuck@lizum /etc.110]$

With the tarball copy now complete, enable the new override

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start plexmediaserver

Presuming no errors above (in the copy and with PMS starting), you’re now free to delete /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library and recover the space.

[Plocmstart]

Thanks for the help. The tar operation can’t complete though because there is not enough space. Repeated message for every folder:

tar: ./Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media: Cannot mkdir: No space left on device

Can I do a mv or cp of the directory instead?

[Plocmstart]

OK got things working. It appears that /home isn’t mounted as its own partition, so it doesn’t really matter if the library is in /var or /home. Maybe I should fix this in the future.

Since this is on a VM, I ended up adding another 24GB space to the disk and extending the LVM with this space. It allowed me to complete the move of the data to /home.

Restarting the service, plexmediaserver.service was stuck in an “activating” state. I then did the upgrade to the latest version and then it loaded correctly again.

The end result for disk space:
[root@plex /]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /dev
tmpfs 3.9G 96K 3.9G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 3.9G 1.2M 3.9G 1% /run
tmpfs 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mapper/fedora-root 60G 34G 24G 60% /
tmpfs 3.9G 156K 3.9G 1% /tmp
/dev/sdb1 118G 60M 112G 1% /mnt/transcode
/dev/sda1 477M 133M 315M 30% /boot
192.168.1.35:mnt/VOL0/Videos 9.5T 2.6T 6.9T 27% /nas/video
//192.168.1.35/temp 7.0T 22G 6.9T 1% /nas/temp
tmpfs 799M 20K 799M 1% /run/user/42
tmpfs 799M 0 799M 0% /run/user/1000

[ChuckPa]

@Plocmstart said:
Thanks for the help. The tar operation can’t complete though because there is not enough space. Repeated message for every folder:

tar: ./Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media: Cannot mkdir: No space left on device

Can I do a mv or cp of the directory instead?

Sorry I didn’t see this until late.

Had I known you were in a VM, I’d have given different instructions.

If I may suggest; in the future build with standard partitions (/boot is 500 MB, /, and swap 4GB (?) ) and give yourself at 64-128 GB max size. It will only take what it needs when it needs it.

You can always mount the Network share on /mnt and save to it. recreate the VM with bigger space, and then pull back. This is the alternative instructions I would have given had I known.

[Plocmstart]

No problem, I hadn’t mentioned it in the original post. Now that I see how I can move the library, I might end up just moving it to a NFS share in the future and create a new VM with the latest version of Fedora. Thanks again for the help.

[bqbergfield]

Just want to thank you both for this thread as I ran into the same issue ChuckPA ran into. Still learning Linux so the guidance on how easy it is to move the PMS Application Support directory out of the root /var directory was key.
I found the following command useful to confirm what device it was really in, that others might find useful:
df -h /lib/plexmediaserver

Which in my default installation had landed in the “/” root directory on /dev/mapper/fedora-root (that is only 54 Gb and system complained about being full after full media library build out and TV services activation). Moved to the /dev/mapper/fedora-home device by using the exact syntax of the tar xf command Plocmstart provided (which has 190 Gb), ie /home.
Before deleting the /var/plexmediaserver directory and files off of root (after the process to migrate) I used
mv /var/plexmediaserver /var/plexmediaserver-old
then restarted pms to make sure it was not relying on this old directory for anything before deleting the files (to have an easy fallback path).
Thanks.

[blaha]

I tried this with a simple mv to an SSD that had some space. I did the chown -R plex:plex and chmod -R o+rwx for good measure. I was able to play tv and movies again after a reboot and sleeping on it. For a while I got a generic “transcoder error” message but could play on my android device.

Plex 1.15.1.710
Ubuntu 18.04

[ChuckPa]

I have a How-To which shows how to move your Plex metadata off the root (/var/lib/plexmediaserver) directory to a space which historically is larger (/home/plexdata)

Moving PMS 'Library'

Moving Plex’s metadata (Library) directory on systemd based systems This information is intended for those systems where cat /proc/1/comm returns systemd. If your system returns init, please see the next post in this thread. While you may change /lib/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service, it is under the control of the package manager and subject to replacement without warning at any time during an update. To provide stability, systemd allows creation of an override.conf file to customiz…

Works in conjunction with this (Allows further customizations)

Customizing your Plex configuration

Customizing your Plex configuration on systemd based systems This information is intended for those systems where cat /proc/1/comm returns systemd. On systems which use Systemd (Ubuntu 16+, Fedora, Centos 7, Debian 8,) you create this customization file which SystemD reads prior to launching PMS. This file is independent of the default configuration and service control mechanisms in /lib/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service. Your customization override is preserved across updates, uninstal…