Server Version#: FreeNas 11.2
Player Version#:
This is my first post and it’s not hello, it’s goodbye
I run a FreeNas server and programmed scheduled task to run between 2am and 7am. It’s now 9pm and plex completely hogged my NAS doing thumbnail lookup for movies as the alert said, which it was not authorized to do, and preventing anyone else to execute. Even FreeNas GUI had a hard time to let me go in. Doing ‘nice’? come on…
I’m angry, yes. Can’t say it has been a pleasure.
jss
P.S. You don’t even know FreeNas? Had to choose “server-freebsd”. On which planet are you?
Thank for replying but this will be not productive because I’m not in the mood to investigate why:
An application runs on a time schedule it was not programmed to
An application supposedly running nice, completely hoggs my two cores (HP Proliant NL54), as seen on htop at 200%, to the point that my tvheadend server was pushed out when recording my evening news and my GUI wouldn’t even let me sign in.
All the symptoms point to a system that thinks it owns the machine and everybody else is not allowed to run. And it’s running in a jail, so don’t blame the server which has been wonderfully stable, with months 24/7 with no reboot, until I decided to install Plex.
But no, as I said before, I won’t be wasting more of my time with this. Thank you and don’t waste yours as well, at least trying to help me.
I can promise you we do however he build for FreeBSD not FreeNAS specifically, because as you know FreeBSD is awesome and you can just install the freebsd port/pkg in freebsd with pkgng.
Now FreeNAS did create its own plugin (mantained by them) so you can do it from their GUI, but they are still just using the FreeBSD package.
Unlike the many linux distros or NAS where it might be linux kernel but the package system is very different and hence you need different pkgs, this is not needed with FreeBSD, in fact a few (maybe a lot of folks here use XigmaNAS - The FreeNAS alternative that is also based of FreeBSD and the port just works).
Now I understand you might be having some issues, but I’m assuming if you toke the time to post here, you’re not really just saying goodbye but maybe making one last cry for help?
If so and as @dane22 said we need a bit more constructive post… maybe even just an Error Message you’re seeing? Or a screenshot? Maybe you’re just seeing high RAM/CPU usage. You did say plex completely hogged my NAS so I’m assuming this might be the issue, and if so please post at least a top output showing plex is actually hogging you’re server and not something else…
Anyway do let us know if you’re looking for help if so I’d be happy to do it.
Yeah I’d be curious to see the htop/top output, I’m also assuming ZFS is in use since its freenas 11.2, and plex is in a Jail.
And I would also like to make a few comments around this statement:
What time schedule are you referring too? If you’re referring to schedule tasks you can configure that in the plex server settings, just uncheck everything, but I would advice against it, the whole point is that you can set those task to run in “none-working” hours so it cause less or none impact when you want to use the server for playback!
In any case its surely not running something is not programmed to, Plex Media Server, is it scanning you’re media? Is its generating thumbnails? Analysis files/metadata etc?
Or are you just seeing 200% usage on PMS doing nothing? if so that’s either a bug or you’re not really using plex…
I am really interested to know more, cause FreeBSD is my main server, I don’t use FreeNAS cause I simply prefer plain FreeBSD, I still have zfs and plex on a jail (even with Hardware Transcoding working), but I do also test on FreeNAS and don’t see this behavior so if I may ask please do share more and let us help you!
Thank you for reopening the thread, let’s start over.
Sorry for the rant but, you see, I’ve come to an age where most people want things that just work, don’t have time to waste and don’t enjoy debugging. I’ve done a lot of hard and soft debugging when I was young but then, it was my job and those were my products; that’s over now.
But Plex is a very good product, conceptually speaking. Only Kodi competes but just on the client side, it’s not the same. Functionally, carving for metadata is fantastic, it almost always finds it, in my case with some problems.
For the user, although being closed source and paid, it has a very well balanced monetizing policy. But it’ll be the only closed source application I’ll be using, not counting macOS & bundles. This if I’ll ever make it work to my needs, with your help, if you will.
So, I’ll now start my Plex-server jail again and wait for the problem, to report back. Unless you know a way to trigger it. One that comes to my mind is deleting and reinstating one of the libraries, but this would be cheating to the system because it is configured to start looking if something changes, which by the way was not the case yesterday.
I’ll try to change my username, if that’s possible, to not reflect my email, which is nonsense.
The server has been very quiet all day, the activity indicator only went on when I deliberatly moved a TV Shown to another folder and asked for file scanning. CPU load went up moderatly but got back to normal a while after.
The family started protesting because a movie started stuttering, but this movie was being streamed through Kodi from a FreeNAS share; so, not through the Plex jail.
I opened htop and the top process was from plex media server and was taking 175% of CPU time (remember it has 2 cores). As much as I could see at a glance, it was transcoding but probably for analysis, once there was no streaming client connected.
Once again I had to shut down the jail, and quickly, because the family wouldn’t wait. I was convinced that I would be able to gather the data from the log, but I couldn’t; and I looked through a lot of logs: Media Server, Scanner, Deep Scanner, Transcoder, Statistics, DLNA, …
After the movie finished, I started the jail again but it’s again quiet. I guess we’ll have to wait once more.
I am as well a freenas and plex user, I wanted to chime in to add a little something that might be useful: your CPU, albeit perfect for a NAS, doesn’t do well with transcoding tasks and such. You are better off to NOT create thumbnails and such and to ONLY do direct play, since you will have a veeeery hard time with transcoding.
Sorry, not trying to be rude, but there are phones that are far more powerful now.
As starkita mentioned, you will definately want to disable all background scanning, thumbnail generation, etc.
Keep in mind, that plex must do some kind of analysis of your content so it knows what kind of resolutions and codecs that your content is.
I don’t think there is any way to disable that. So you will always have some kind of load being generated at some point, at least until all your content is fully scanned.
You may also even want to disable most of the scheduled tasks, because it is unlikely that the tasks could complete in the limited timeframe.
scan periodically > (depending on how long a scan takes) 12 or 24 hours
run scanner tasks at lower priority
scheduled tasks > you might want to disable all, or most of those options.
Please understand, that while it may be sufficient for basic direct play of content, your server is simply not powerful enough for most of plex’s advanced features and not really even powerful enough for the necessary background processes.
@starkita: yes, before installing Plex, I was very satisfied with my FreeNAS. Rock solid, no troubles at all, served the kids movies through Kodi, did my macOS TimeMachine and other pc’s rsync scheduled backup, runs my NextCloud server, my mosquitto mtqq server: a perfect world.
Idle it consumes only about 50 W with a couple of 8TB WD Reds and a boot ssd, that goes up to about 60 W with disk activity.
I’m very concerned with power consumption not only because I think everybody should be, but also because it’s expensive in my country, about 0,20 € / KWh because it’s mostly green, wind and hydric. That’s why I don’t go for a I5 or I7 to satisfy Plex.
@TecknoJunky: thank you for your advices. Please read above why I don’t change my light hardware, it’s because it isn’t power hungry. And, between Plex and power saving, I choose the later.
And, by the way, I’m also rather old and I don’t think I should be trashed
I’ll try to switch off all those things and, if the result is not useful, I guess I’ll have to live without Plex. But I’ll always have Kodi on my RPi’s for 5 W (or so).
Transcoding is probably not a good idea for this CPU, and of analyses is doing it because it’s finding content that needs it, it’s not super expensive though but it is a old CPU so maybe it enough to make it struggle a bit.
Anyway this is why I suggest disabling a bunch of things in DM as others did here. That would help you keep using Plex but with less weight on the CPU.
If I may suggest if your top concern is power consumption would newer Intel cpus be better actually!? You can get some that consume 20W ( even less than that) and with QuickSync (hardware transcoding - which would be supported in freebsd).
But if you don’t want to upgrade, I guess you can use scheduled task to have scanning / analysis happen at less busy times and never use transcode. DirectPlay should cause troubles but you do need to have compatible media with the clients.
I actually had a similar situation for my home setup, I needed something better but the old one is still good as a NAS, so I kept it as such, and the have a NUC (quickSync support) with freeBSD and plex in a jail.
I already did what @TeknoJunky advised and, again, the server has been very quiet.
But of couse I would like to have a fully functional Plex server. As I gain more practice with it, I begin appreciating its library organization abilities. At least on one instance, using the same media source, Plex divided and organized one complete collection (Beethoven) of dozens of cd’s without an error whereas Kodi scrambled it all in the same page and nothing I’ve been doing, even renaming the media, corrects the problem.
And, of course, transcoding would be very much welcome when I’m on the road.
So, I started thinking about building a new system with an I3 or I5 (quickSync). I’ve been reading that people achieve very low idle power, even lower than the N54L. But another thing to care about is fan noise, my server is very close to me. But then, I guess lower power implies lower noise.
Although I’ll look into your solution with the NUC, I would like to have it all in one server, already too many boxes lying around.
I’ll be watching the server after the new configs and be back with relevant news.
Edit: I would like to use the mini-ITX format for the Node 304 chassis. Does any mainboard come to your mind? And suitable cpu, I3, I5 (8th gen)?
I suppose that will depend on budget / preference, and has I’ve never build something like it I don’t have any suggestions other than I tend to go for ASUS for motherbaords, but you have more options… something to keep in mind is: NOTE: motherboards with SATA ports that are angled 90 degrees may conflict with installation in the case.
This is stated on their page (Node 304) so be aware of that…
And of course it might depends on the CPU you choose (compatible socket), but there if possible I would always go for 8th gen, as the newer the better video acceleration will be, I.E. some older cpu have quick sync but Hardware Transcoding quality would be very poor the higher the original quality is (like 4k) this is why if the purpose of a CPU is for this, you should prefer that instead of a faster clock I.E.
however he build for FreeBSD not FreeNAS specifically, because as you know FreeBSD is awesome and you can just install the freebsd port/pkg in freebsd with pkgng.
