PMS locking up during playback.

General Discussions
1

I’d use the term crashing, but it’s not really crashing, just the transcoder or something seems to lock up. This is happening about once every 4-5 hours of playback. The the dots will appear over top of my movie (using latest PMP beta) and a minute or 2 later, it stops - then 4 or 5 mins later I get a “Media server unavailable” error. The PMS web interface will still work, but I can’t watch anything on any device.

Checking the PMS logs, the only thing of any interest i see is this:

Mar 06, 2016 22:48:58 [0x2b9849606700] DEBUG - NetworkServiceBrowser: PLAYER arrived: 192.168.10.144
Mar 06, 2016 22:52:15 [0x2b9849606700] DEBUG - NetworkServiceBrowser: PLAYER departed after not being seen for 181.868433 seconds: 192.168.10
.144
Mar 06, 2016 22:53:05 [0x2b9845202700] ERROR - Error writing media: 32 - Broken pipe
Mar 06, 2016 22:53:05 [0x2b9845202700] DEBUG - Completed: [192.168.10.20:64381] GET /library/parts/40938/file.mkv (586 live) TLS 6618448ms 41
83687168 bytes 200 (pipelined: 27)
Mar 06, 2016 22:54:00 [0x2b9845202700] ERROR - CERT: Error in TLS handshake: short read
Mar 06, 2016 22:54:00 [0x2b9845202700] ERROR - CERT: Error in TLS handshake: short read
Mar 06, 2016 22:54:00 [0x2b9846200700] ERROR - CERT: Error in TLS handshake: short read

I assume the problem is the “Error writing media; 32 - Broken pipe”. What causes that? is that the problem? What can I do to fix it??

Cheers,

whtieatom

2

with problems like this best to have debug logging at both ends and look at logs from both sides :the server and the player

Also it is important to provide full log files and after a restart (as advised here https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201643703-Reporting-issues-with-Plex-Media-Server ) because what gets logged when plex media server starts helps one understand the environment

Network issues would give rise to symptoms like this

You could try with Secure Connections disabled (sign server out and in within settings after making the change) and also sign client apps out and in

See Plex Media Player log files support page https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/207338748-Plex-Media-Player-Logs

3

Oh… Kay? So what does the broken pipe error mean?

4

@whiteatom said:
Oh… Kay? So what does the broken pipe error mean?

I believe it just means the connection between the two sides was lost - one side crashing would give rise to the other side saying the pipe is broken. Also network connection failure would do the same

Just googled what does a "broken pipe" mean and got several hits - this is one of them

5

This seems to have been fixed by the most recent update - not sure what was changed, but the problem seems to be resolved…