Server Version#: 1.27.0.5849
During some basic troubleshooting and rebuilding I noticed that my com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db is getting kind of large when compared to others I have seen on this forum.
com.plexapp.plugins.library.db = 1.79 GB
com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db = 23.2 GB
I did some basic browsing but could not find out what the blob actually stored, I found a few guesses on reddit and other forums. But nothing concrete.
Any ideas of what is in there and if 23 GB is excessive?
Note: I’m not storage poor, I just want to make sure everything is optimized.
As these can be large they are separated out of the main plex com.plexapp.plugins.library.db and into their own db. I have the majority of these disabled and my blobs db is tiny…
364K /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Databases/com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db
255M /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Databases/com.plexapp.plugins.library.db
For context, I have 3378 movies, 619 tv shows with 27399 episodes.
But otherwise I agree that it’s “stuff like” that.
Quick guesses about a few -
I think loudness analysis is blobs.blob_type=2.
I think some types of Plex-fetched subtitle are blobs.blob_type=3.
Series intro analysis might be blobs.blob_type=5? I’m not sure.
I don’t have Sonic Analysis enabled on this system. I’m pretty sure that would go in there.
23.2 GB seems big to me, I agree. Do you have a TON of music?
Background: What started this curiosity about the blob is that I started to see “Sqlite3: Sleeping for 200ms to retry busy DB” in my docker logs and slow query messages in the Plex log. I went through all of the typical optimizations and enhancements.
Note: I have the profile running on a dedicated NVME drive.
Back to the blobs.
Regarding Music, I have large amount. But Sonic Analysis is off. I also had a bunch of audiobooks, but those were pulled as part of my trial and error to diagnose the above issue.
In terms of other media it is significantly large (300TB+), so that is why I understand the DB size. But I have yet to find anyone with a blobs file as big as mine.
With that said, I embed subtitles into the files, but I am using intro analysis. I have had my environment for some time, could it just be due to a cleanup script not kicking off?
I just checked mine for another comparison point and my blobs db is only 1.9 GB.
My library size is 113 TB, so not quite as large as yours, but doesn’t seem proportionally correct (think that is what I want to say) compared to yours. I have chapter thumbnails as well as intro analysis on (also video preview thumbnails, just as another data point).
I have 3,106 movies, 1,128 series consisting of 3,252 seasons and 47,888 episodes.
I don’t have a music library so none of the scheduled tasks that relate to that type of library are enabled.
Doesn’t give you an answer to your question, but just additional data points.
I’m not sure which ninjas/employees are the ones with the DB knowledge, but hopefully one of them will see this thread and maybe be able to give an answer as to why your blobs DB is so large.
I appreciate everyones info.
Still curious what is in the blob. May crack open open sqllite and poke around.
@VBB
That gives me some comfort knowing it may be stale data. With that said I am going to try and rebuild the blob, then do a full refresh and see how high it goes. Will keep you all in the loop.
The blobs are “binary large objects”. Things like pictures or waveforms, stuffed into a SQL column. They look like garbage unless you extract them and convert them back to some readable format. It’s like opening a JPG in Notepad or TextEdit.
If you’re comfortable with the command line and SQLite, it would be pretty easy to look for orphaned blob items that don’t have a corresponding media item or part, or for duplicates. It would be interesting to see if that has happened to the database somehow.
I decided to dive right in and I have an answer…
99% of the data within my com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db file was located in the blobs table. When I did a row count it came out to about 146520 rows.
I stopped the docker container and renamed com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db. Then scanned a single season (same intro for the whole season). The size of the blob went up about 1.62 MB. Then tested it across other seasons of another show and it went up about by an additional 7.9 MB. Based on this the total size appears consistent based on the total count of seasons scanned.
Note: I am aware some seasons may share the same intro.
I then got a total count of the seasons I have and multiplied them by 1.62 MB and the results were pretty close to the original size.
So to anyone that finds this thread, if you want to keep the size of com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db down, turn off intro detection…
Thanks again everyone. It seems like I have my answer to what was in my com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db that made it so big.
Nice, thanks for the update. That’s a lot of seasons.
This makes sense. The two databases are initially cloned from the same template. The blobs database only puts entries in the blobs table. The other database doesn’t use the blobs table.
