PMS on Nvidia Shield suddenly won't start

Plex Media Server
1

Was watching content on Friday with no issues. Yesterday I copied some new files over to it and when I tried to go into the UI it was completely down.

Went on to the Shield itself and verified that there were no updates to the PMS (said there wasn’t) and verified it still had access to the file system (it does).

Went thru the logs and the only log since Friday is a Startup Crash.log file that simply says:
“Failed to initialized logging: Empty or non-existent file”.

My google-fu has failed me and the Plex sub-reddit is still dark. Anyone have any ideas?

ETA: Fwiw, this location only had a “cache” folder in it: Android/data/com.plexapp.mediaserver.smb/

I created a Plex Media Server/Plus-in Support/Databases folder within it and copied the 2 db backup files over (renamed). That still didn’t fix it and no other update to the logs. I’ve never been in this directory before so have no idea what it used to look like. Possibility that the whole folder structure got wiped and I need other/different files here?

Really don’t want to uninstall PMS and start over

2

Well, no idea what happened, but I went with the nuclear option and did the uninstall/reinstall on the shield. Moved it back to external storage and copied my latest db backup files back over. It then threw a real error, so sounds like my latest backup was corrupt. Went to the 3 day earlier backup and that did the trick.

3

if your shield isn’t on a ups and you have any power outages even just blips then you can get a corrupt database very easily. i was in an apartment and it happened 3-4 times in 6 months before i finally got a ups. pms does not like being shut down unexpectedly especially if it is running maintenance at night.

4

I don’t, actually. But have had it running like this for over a year without any issues. We also didn’t have any power outages. But I’m with you - my guess is it’s something related to that.

5

You can check your logs

https://support.plex.tv/articles/202915258-where-is-the-plex-media-server-data-directory-located/

Under the Plex Media Server.log
Screenshot (3602)

Search the words “corrupt and malformed”