My Plex Media Server on my Mac Mini running macOS Monterey 12.1 shuts itself down almost every day at random. I have no idea why and the only way that I detect it is when I try to access Plex from my AppleTV and the app is unable to get the movies from my Mac Mini server. After I restart the PMS it works fine for about a day or so. This has been going on for a few weeks and I updated the PMS every time there’s an update available.
I tried the ‘Optimize Database’ and ‘Clean bundle’ functions in settings though that didn’t resolve the issue. I have restarted my Mac Mini many times over the last few weeks and the issue continues.
Any suggestions to resolve this situation would be greatly appreciated.
I am experiencing the same problem with my M1 MacMini. Checking the activity monitor log in MacOS only shows the PlexTranscoder crashed through Rosetta. I am beyond frustrated as PMS was working flawlessly for nearly a year on the M1.
I am trying to resist the urge to just burn it to the ground and look for an alternative solution.
It is just sitting in a closet right now. I actually have a couple machines that are dormant at present. I just prefer the MacMini as it doesn’t suck down as much electricity as some of my bigger machines. The Mini was working great until suddenly it wasn’t. I have a feeling Monterey is to blame…
Your log files show several hundred network resets, including many right before what looks like a system crash at 06:11 on 20 Dec (Plex Media Server.1.log abruptly ends at that time).
Dec 20, 2021 06:03:57.944 [0x309cfc000] DEBUG - NetworkInterface: Notified of network changed (force=0)
Dec 20, 2021 06:03:57.944 [0x309e02000] DEBUG - Network change notification but nothing changed.
You have two network interfaces in the same 192.168 subnet and are bridging to two other subnets in net 10.
Having two interfaces in the same subnet can cause problems for Plex. Disconnect or shutdown one of the 192.168.0 x interfaces.
Which interface is used for Internet connectivity and which has Plex clients?
Plex is using 192.168.0.145 as the primary interface to communicate with local clients. If this is not correct, then set the correct interface in Settings → Network → Preferred Network Interface.
I don’t understand what you mean by this (I have limited networking experience).
I don’t recall a system crash yesterday.
On my Mac Mini preferences and Network, I have the following network connections:
Ethernet cable connected to my hub then router (192.168.0.145) and also
Wi-Fi Connected (192.168.0.101).
Could this be the cause for the two network interfaces that you mentioned? I don’t know if I need to have the wifi enabled (I vaguely remember that something wasn’t working when I had the wifi off though I don’t recall what).
On my router, I reserved the IP addresses mentioned above reserved for the Mac Mini.
In Plex Server Settings> Network> Preferred Network Interface> was initially blank and I selected this from the drop-down list: en0 (192.168.0.145). With this change, I shut down PMR and restarted it so I’ll see if this helps.
Based on the additional info I provided above, please let me know if there’s anything else I should be checking or setting.
Turn off the WiFi connection. It will help stabilize the network for Plex. It will not disrupt using the Mac for web browsing, reading e-mail, etc. That traffic will use the wired port as well.
There may be other things happening as well, but stabilizing the network connection for Plex is something that needs to happen.
If Plex Media Server crashes again then pull the logs and upload them to the thread.
Even if PMS does not crash, pull the logs in ~24 hours and upload to the thread. Just to check if the network has stabilized.
Plex Media Server was started at 19:41 on Dec 20th. It also uploaded a crash report to Plex servers at the same time.
The last log entries before that occurred at 06:11, a gap of 13.5 hours. Also, when Plex Media Server is gracefully shutdown there are corresponding messages in the log files. The log entries at 06:11 just stop, with no shutdown messages.
This makes it appear as if the Plex Media Server process crashed or was killed at that time. The Mac didn’t necessarily crash, but the PMS application stopped.
Everything came back up OK, but that’s what made me think PMS crashed at that time.
Here are the updated logs. I restarted my Mac Mini yesterday evening and so far the Plex server has been running without issues. It’s a bit early to tell if the situation is fully resolved however it’s looking promising so far.
I turned on the Wifi on my Mac Mini and it seems like everything is running fine with just the ethernet connection.
I updated my router setting - reserved an IP address for my Mac Mini for the ethernet MAC address and also set port forwarding for plex accordingly.
That helped. The number of network change notifications is much less (from ~1200 to ~200).
One additional item to check.
There is a device at 192.168.0.122. If possible, give it a quick reboot or power cycle.
Plex uses SSDP to find items on the network. It is a standard protocol used by many applications and devices.
Plex expects replies to SSDP discovery inquiries to be in a standard format. When they are not, there is an entry in the log file.
Whatever is at 192.168.0.122 is not responding in a way Plex can understand.
There is a log entry every 30 seconds: Dec 22, 2021 08:39:15.997 [0x306e11000] ERROR - SSDP: Error parsing device schema for http://192.168.0.122:9080
I do not believe this is often enough to cause network instability or problems with Plex, but it wouldn’t hurt to restart/power cycle the device if possible (every 5 seconds would be a problem).
That might help Plex understand the device’s reply and not create so many log entries.
I checked my router and 192.168.0.112 is an Amazon Echo. I had powered it off yesterday. I powered it off and back on again now.
I’ll send an updated log file tomorrow.
If I recall correctly, I had added a ‘skill’ in Amazon Alexa for the Echo device to be able to trigger commands to Plex, however, I found it wasn’t useful so I stopped triggering Alexa (Amazon Echo) for Plex. Perhaps I should delete that activity from the Amazon app if that is triggering network activity to Plex unnecessarily.
Let me know if you have any other suggestions. Tks…
Here’s my latest log files. I watched a movie through my AppleTV> Plex app last night and finished around 10:30. Sometime between that time and 8am, the Plex server shut itself down. I had forgotten to turn on my VPN and turned it off this morning although I don’t recall exactly what time I did that so I’m not clear if the Plex server shut itself down before I turned off the VPN or after. Plex Media Server Logs_2021-12-23_10-33-15.zip (3.6 MB)
Plex stopped at 03:33 (last entry in Plex Media Server.1.log) and was restarted at 09:19 (beginning of Plex Media Server.log).
Unfortunately, I cannot tell why Plex stopped. Everything looks OK as far as I can tell. Plex is running the nightly maintenance, updating metadata, and it just quits.
What start/stop times do you have set for Settings → Scheduled Tasks?
Edit: Looked at an earlier set of log files. Looks like the maintenance window closes at 5 a.m. The maintenance window completed normally, so does not appear to be a problem with any of those tasks…
Not helpful to resolving the issue, but I dropped Ubuntu 20.04 on my spare system with the RTX Quadro card and it is working brilliantly. I have had no issues. I am thinking that MacOS Monterey has introduced an issue as I had zero issues when I was running Big Sur. I’ll keep an eye on this thread to see if anyone discovers a solution.
I relaunched the server at 9:19 after I detected it had stopped. I wasn’t using the computer at all at 3:33 and can’t think of anything that the computer would be doing at that time that may have interfered with Plex.
