Server crashing when I try to run it

[Nato1978]

Server Version#:1.40.3.8555-fef15d30c

Every time I try to launch Plex Media Server on my M1 Mac mini (running Sonoma 14.5), it crashes. I open Plex Media Server, I see the Plex chevron icon appear in my menubar for a split second, and then it vanishes. I’ve tried rebooting the computer; no dice.

I only noticed this error today; far as I know, it previously ran fine on this exact same setup. I don’t believe I’ve recently updated the OS. I was running a previous version of Plex Server, so I went to the web site and manually downloaded and installed the latest version. Same error.

I tried to roll back to an earlier version with Time Machine. Same error!

[tom80H]

If the Plex Media Server won’t start and doesn’t even get to the stage where it’ll be writing to the server logs, you can attempt the following procedure to see if there’s any error messages on the OS level:

1. Open Finder and navigate to /Applications
2. Select Show Content from the context menu of the Plex Media Server.app item
3. Navigate to Contents/MacOS
4. Open the Terminal app
5. Drag the Plex Media Server executable from the Finder window (#3) into the Terminal Window and press Return to execute it

This is no different from running the app, so it won’t succeed – but you should get a more specific error message about what’s causing it to fail starting.

[Nato1978]

Thanks! Here’s the error I got:

Error: Unable to set up server: sqlite3_statement_backend::loadOne: database disk image is malformed (N4soci10soci_errorE)

I followed the instructions here to delete my database file and restore it from a backup. That seems to have worked!