Random PMS crash on Synology DSM 6.2

[brian.biggs]

Hardware: Synology DS418play, DSM 6.2.4-25556
Server Version: 1.24.0.4930
Player Version: 4.59.2

I am running the latest version of PMS. I have had issues in the last couple of weeks with PMS randomly crashing (maybe 4-6 times). I think it’s happening when someone starts playing something (remotely), or maybe even when they are in the middle of playing something. I’m still trying to figure that out.

I’m new to digging through the log files on PMS for Synology, but I started looking at the “Plex Media Server” and “com.plex.app.system.log”. I found the following lines, and reference to this problem elsewhere in the forum. I’m not sure it is related to my crash, but I can’t get the permissions issue resolved.

Aug 14, 2021 20:51:08.555 [0x7f86f7f0fb38] ERROR - [Notify] Failed to add watch for "/volume1/Videos/Shows/SIX" (13: Permission denied)
Aug 14, 2021 20:51:08.555 [0x7f86f7f0fb38] ERROR - [Notify] Failed to add watch for "/volume1/Videos/Shows/SIX/Season 02" (13: Permission denied)
Aug 14, 2021 20:51:08.556 [0x7f86f7f0fb38] ERROR - [Notify] Failed to add watch for "/volume1/Videos/Shows/SIX/Season 01" (13: Permission denied)

My Shared Folder (Videos), and everything underneath of it is owned by myadmin, my administrator account. I have gone into Properties and forced that cascade of permissions and ACL down to everything under the Shared Folder. I’ve also changed everything to be owned by users:myadmin. The plex user is in the ACL and has permissions. I compared two ACL lists, one for a folder that is showing this permissions error, and one for a folder that does NOT show the error in the log. They are both IDENTICAL. I omitted some details in the middle, but they ARE identical.

root@NAS:/volume1/Videos/Shows# synoacltool -get Firefly
ACL version: 1
Archive: is_inherit,is_support_ACL
Owner: [myadmin(user)]
---------------------
         [0] group:administrators:allow:rwxpdDaARWc--:fd--  (level:2)
         [1] user:myadmin:allow:rwxpdDaARWc--:fd--  (level:2)
         ...
         [6] user:plex:allow:rwxpdDaARWc--:fd--  (level:2)

Here’s the tail end of my Plex Media Server log right before the crash:

Aug 15, 2021 08:46:40.447 [0x7f86f6bdeb38] ERROR - Error issuing curl_easy_perform(handle): 60
Aug 15, 2021 08:46:44.397 [0x7f86f6f19b38] WARN - Held transaction for too long (../Library/MetadataItem.cpp:1178): 0.190000 seconds
Aug 15, 2021 08:46:44.397 [0x7f86f6f19b38] WARN - Held transaction for too long (../Library/Season.cpp:68): 0.190000 seconds
Aug 15, 2021 08:46:44.549 [0x7f86f6f19b38] WARN - Held transaction for too long (../Library/Episode.cpp:225): 0.210000 seconds
Aug 15, 2021 08:46:44.889 [0x7f86f6f19b38] WARN - Held transaction for too long (../Library/MetadataItem.cpp:3855): 0.230000 seconds
Aug 15, 2021 08:46:45.236 [0x7f86f65e1b38] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 210.000000 ms to retrieve 6 items.
Aug 15, 2021 08:46:45.427 [0x7f86f6604b38] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 240.000000 ms to retrieve 6 items.
Aug 15, 2021 08:46:51.208 [0x7f86f65e1b38] WARN - Overzealous client asked for end range of 917503, content size is 894692; we'll clip.
Aug 15, 2021 08:46:52.134 [0x7f86f5cdbb38] WARN - Held transaction for too long (../Library/MetadataItem.cpp:1123): 0.330000 seconds
Aug 15, 2021 08:46:52.142 [0x7f86f5cdbb38] WARN - Held transaction for too long (../Library/MetadataItem.cpp:5107): 0.330000 seconds
Aug 15, 2021 08:46:52.557 [0x7f86f7086b38] WARN - MDE: unable to find a working transcode profile for video stream
Aug 15, 2021 08:46:52.579 [0x7f86f7086b38] WARN - MDE: unable to find a working transcode profile for video stream
Aug 15, 2021 08:46:52.581 [0x7f86f7086b38] INFO - CodecManager: starting EAE at "/volume1/Plex/tmp_transcoding/pms-02cba7dc-0eb0-443a-b3e0-dd20ee99390d/EasyAudioEncoder"
Aug 15, 2021 08:46:55.589 [0x7f86f7ef7b38] WARN - Overzealous client asked for end range of 1048575, content size is 1011064; we'll clip.
Aug 15, 2021 08:46:58.018 [0x7f86f7ef7b38] WARN - Overzealous client asked for end range of 1048575, content size is 892812; we'll clip.
Aug 15, 2021 08:46:58.958 [0x7f86f5cdbb38] WARN - Held transaction for too long (../Library/MetadataItem.cpp:7208): 0.270000 seconds
Aug 15, 2021 08:47:01.182 [0x7f86f5cdbb38] WARN - Held transaction for too long (../Library/Tag.cpp:215): 0.290000 seconds
Aug 15, 2021 08:47:01.182 [0x7f86f5cdbb38] WARN - Held transaction for too long (../Library/MetadataItem.cpp:7208): 0.290000 seconds
Aug 15, 2021 08:47:31.399 [0x7f86f771cb38] WARN - Overzealous client asked for end range of 983039, content size is 942820; we'll clip.
Aug 15, 2021 08:50:30.339 [0x7f86f7ef7b38] WARN - Overzealous client asked for end range of 1048575, content size is 967260; we'll clip.
Aug 15, 2021 08:50:42.326 [0x7f86f71d8b38] WARN - Overzealous client asked for end range of 983039, content size is 862920; we'll clip.
Aug 15, 2021 08:50:50.707 [0x7f86f7ef7b38] WARN - Overzealous client asked for end range of 917503, content size is 915372; we'll clip.
Aug 15, 2021 08:50:56.262 [0x7f86f8014b38] WARN - Sync: local sync directory "/volume1/Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Cache/Transcode/Sync+" does not exist
Aug 15, 2021 08:51:18.340 [0x7f86f7ef7b38] WARN - Overzealous client asked for end range of 1048575, content size is 1025728; we'll clip.
Aug 15, 2021 08:51:20.019 [0x7f86f6a51b38] ERROR - Error issuing curl_easy_perform(handle): 28
Aug 15, 2021 08:51:20.027 [0x7f86f69bfb38] ERROR - Error issuing curl_easy_perform(handle): 28
Aug 15, 2021 08:51:25.016 [0x7f86f6a84b38] WARN - Connection Tester: Error testing media server Some Other PLEX in 10000 ms.
Aug 15, 2021 08:51:25.017 [0x7f86f6cdbb38] ERROR - Error issuing curl_easy_perform(handle): 3
Aug 15, 2021 08:51:25.017 [0x7f86f6cdbb38] WARN - HTTP error requesting GET /media/providers (3, URL using bad/illegal format or missing URL) ()
Aug 15, 2021 08:51:25.029 [0x7f86f69bfb38] ERROR - Error issuing curl_easy_perform(handle): 28
Aug 15, 2021 08:52:01.044 [0x7f86f8496b38] ERROR - [EventSourceClient/mediaserver] Retrying in 600 seconds.
Aug 15, 2021 08:52:01.253 [0x7f86f8496b38] WARN - Crash: Crash reporting disabled

Questions:

1. How do I fix the permissions issue? It looks like it’s fine to me, but I’m obviously missing something.
2. What other log files should I be looking at for an error immediately after the crash? Should I look at the new log after PMS starts back up, or the “.1” version from right before the crash?
3. I have now checked Enable Plex Media Server debug logging under settings to maybe get more detailed info when the crash does occur. Anything else I should do?

Thanks!

[brian.biggs]

@trumpy81

It is NOT a permissions issue. You have run out of slots to monitor your Plex folders.

Thanks for that reference. I had not seen that yet. I followed the instructions on the page, but my number of folders is less than the 8192 that is mentioned. So I assume that means the default is 1 page, and with under 2500 folders, I shouldn’t be experiencing this problem in the first place?

Should I continue with the Scheduled Task anyway and bump the value up for TWO pages (65535)?

Does this mean my problem may be something else?

Crashes are often caused by poorly encoded/damages files. Check the Analysis logs and any files you find with errors should be re-encoded or replaced.

I looked at all of the Plex Media Scanner Analysis*.log files and I don’t find any errors. Nothing with the text "ERROR - " in the log line.

Check to see if any crash logs have been uploaded to plex.tv. Those logs go directly to the Plex engineers, no one else has access to them.

I do not upload my crash logs to Plex and would prefer not to.

I also recommend that you move your media out of the default video folder. The video folder is reserved for use by Video Station (installed or not) and has been known to cause issues with Plex.

I am not using the default video folder. All of my media is in a shared folder I created called /volume1/Videos.

Thanks!

[brian.biggs]

Open Control Panel > Shared Folder and edit your media folder/s. On the permission tab, disable all permissions for user plex and click on OK to close the Edit window. Reopen the Edit window and set the permissions for user plex, either R/O or R/W permissions and then click on OK to close the window again.

I did this, same problem.

To set file permissions, open File Station and right click on the media folder/s and select Properties.
…

I did this, same problem.

The crash logs only contain data related to the state of the processor and the tasks surrounding the crash. There is no personal data in those logs whatsoever.

I have enabled crash logs being sent to Plex. What do I do on the next crash? Open a support ticket? BTW, it crashed again last night. The last few lines of the Plex Media Server log file were:

Aug 16, 2021 22:35:37.029 [0x7fa09a09fb38] DEBUG - Removed transcode data consumer, active count 1 => 0
Aug 16, 2021 22:35:37.041 [0x7fa09a0c2b38] DEBUG - [EventSourceClient/mediaserver] Failure in IdleTimeout (0 - No error information).
Aug 16, 2021 22:35:37.041 [0x7fa09a0c2b38] ERROR - [EventSourceClient/mediaserver] Retrying in 600 seconds.
Aug 16, 2021 22:35:37.819 [0x7fa09a0c2b38] WARN - Crash: Crash reporting disabled

Synology will still try to claim that folder, it is too similar to the default name and yes, we have seen it do just that.

So you’re saying that I need to create a NEW share called something like /volume1/Media and move all of my Movies/Shows/Music to that location? Are these the directions I need to follow to avoid jacking up my libraries: Moving Content to a New Location?

I believe you when you say that Synology may be hijacking that location. But I would feel more comfortable moving my libraries if I had some other hard evidence that this was in fact what is going on.

The folders that Plex is complaining about are ALL folders that are new since I migrated to Synology from Windows at the end of June. That seems suspicious as well.

Thanks for your help and input on this. I appreciate your time and comments.

[brian.biggs]

Any additional comments on my last reply, @trumpy81? Thanks!

[petersbar]

hey Brian, any resolution?

I have been having the same issue for a month or so and have a separate post here…

PMS began crashing.. daily

Server Version#: 1.24.4.5081 Player Version#: 6.2.4-25556 update 2 Model: DS418play w 6 gb RAM server log Plex Media Server Logs_2021-10-22_12-13-58.zip (3.3 MB) attached… The crashing pre-dates then last upgrade of DSM and PMS. thanks, BP