If have been trying to resolve a problem with my TV Library on on my FreeNAS (11.3-U5) PMS. I cannot get any metadata to load for the TV Series in my Plex TV Library. I have followed all the advice from other forum posts and I’m still unable to resolve the issue. I’ve verified my file permissions are correct and I can see Plex analyising the files in the logs. I’ve done the ‘Plex Dance’ countless times with no success. I’ve tired switching between the TVDB and The Movie Database agent (and vice versa) and still no success.
I created a test PMS in Windows, mapped a drive to the directory where the TV Series files are saved and created a Plex TV Library. The metadata for all the TV Series was downloaded and saved.
I’ve looked at the logs from the FreeNAS PMS myself but I can’t determine what the issue is. The only thing I’m seeing when I compare the FreeNAS logs with Windows logs is the TVDB agent on the FreeNAS server isn’t connecting to the Internet to download the metadata. If someone could please look at my logs and let me what’s going wrong I would greatly appreciate it.
Are you using the official plugin, or an install in a plain jail? If you have been using the plug-in this whole time I recommend trying an alternate method of installation.
From my understanding that particular script works by downloading the new release and dumping the files over the existing install. Not really a proper way to update things. Are you shutting down the running server when you are doing this updating?
I parsed through the script and it appears that it attempts to stop Plex media server service before updating the application. This is the only way I know of updating PMS for FreeNAS. Is there a better method?
Plugins would normally be updated from the “Update” button you get when you click the arrow on the right to expand the entry on the plugins screen like here:
According to the FreeNAS web admin, the current version of the Plex Media Server Beta (plexpass) plugin is 1.21.3.4015, normal PMS plugin at .4014
At this time I would recommend “rewinding” your server via the ZFS snapshots you (hopefully) made, back to a time where the metadata is still updating. This will be easy to test as when you restore the server to an earlier snapshot all changes to your library since then will get reverted (watch status will regress and new movies/shows added to the library will no longer be listed), but the actual media files will still be on your FreeNAS system (because they are only linked via mount points and do not exist within the plugin jail you’re rewinding right now). So after rewinding you can just do a library scan and see if the previous new items get picked up and load metadata again on the older server. If they don’t, time to go back another step on the snapshots. If they do get metadata then you’ll know if you’ve gone back far enough to before this all got broken.
Once we have a working system again you should FIRST make another snapshot with the library contents up-to-date and then you can try upgrading again with the normal plugin update mechanism.
Thanks for the advice. This option sounds good, I haven’t been taking snapshots (unfortunately) since I’ve been spending my time researching how to get Radarr, Sonarr, SAB and Plex all working in harmony. Now that I have them working together I’ll begin taking scheduled snapshots of my Jails.
One last thing. Do you recommend not installing the latest PMS using the PMS_Update script and wait till the official plugin is updated? Or I should make a snapshot before using the script method to install the latest version of PMS?
Are you going to be able to fix the current Plex install? If you can’t roll back it sounds like a lost cause to me, and you should make a new install (either with a fresh plugin or making a new plain jail and installing yourself) and then copy your library to the new install to see if it’s salvageable. Make the mount points on the new server exactly the same for the least troubles there.
I recommend making a snapshot before each upgrade to your server so if something goes wrong with the upgrade or you discover some new bug a week later you can jump right back to the way things were before.
