Currently using UnRAID with the Plex Docker version mentioned above.
One thing I’ve noticed is that, Plex uses up all the CPU when new media is added. I currently have it set to analyse media, download the metadata, and generate video thumbnails when new stuff is added/detected.
Appreciate that I can solve this issue quickly by changing the settings and running them as scheduled tasks outside of regular ‘working’ hours, but I was also wondering if there was a way that I can change the CPU priority to certain tasks/processes or limit them to a maximum % of CPU within the docker itself? More out of curiosity than anything.
In Settings -> Library there is an option Run scanner tasks at a lower priority.
That said, it doesn’t really work. Various Plex worker processes get launched at a variety of nonsensical priorities and ‘nice’ values, with or without that checkbox enabled.
I’ve never actually noticed it causing a problem, however. Plex does a good job of keeping Optimization/Sync jobs from interfering with active transcoder sessions, which is probably the most important thing.
You know when you ask a question and you think “this’ll be a really good question to work with someone on, ya know, deep dive into the docker and start looking PIDs etc?”
Then someone comes along and pisses on your biscuits by giving you a super simple answer to the question that you should have already known.
Yeah man, that’s what’s happened here.
I think that will solve it. I’ll report back. But yeah, I was having a bad time with it.
If you were having an issue, I’m curious to hear if the checkbox helps. I noticed it changed CPU prioritization for one of the Plex scanner processes, but not others.
I started to write up what I found, but apparently I never posted it.
Then I realized that disk performance is a bigger issue than CPU for Plex background tasks anyway.
Yeah, I’ll let you know how it goes. I also figured out how to pin CPUs and apply % util to different dockers in UnRAID earlier today, and that will help with at least me viewing what’s going on. Yesterday, when adding a load of media and trying to direct stream a 480p copy of Scrubs to my TV, I could neither access the UnRAID docker dashboard or actually play the stream. Changed a few bits around today and it’s performing much better.
