Troubleshooting

Fixing Playback Issues

Playback Fails / App Crashes

Generally this happens when you are playing media on Plex Home Theater or Plex app, where transcoding is being used. The app will crash generally with a message:

Conversation failed. Transcoder crashed or failed to start up

This usually happens because the transcoder was not able to write to the transcoding directory.

  1. Ensure Transcoding directory is setup properly on Plex Server.

  2. Ensure /tmp/Transcode is owned by the right user. Changing the running user without re-creating this directory will cause this to happen.

Spinning playback icon, no playback

Generally if transcoding is setup right, then this is related to the audio transcoding failing. Turn on debug logging on the server and look for:

EAE timeout! EAE not running, or wrong folder? Could not read

This means you need to remap the /tmp directory to your transcoding directory, as plex updated transcoding and split out audio and video encoding into separate locations. Video transcodes in /transcode while audio transcodes in /tmp. Mapping /tmp to the transcoding directory fixes this.

Correctly mapping Plex /tmp to tmpfs.
volumes:
  - /tmp/Transcode/tmp:/tmp

Reference

Managing Duplicates

Duplicate Files for Single Files

This happens when two refreshes for a new file happen at the same time. Generally this occurs because inotify detection is turned on in Plex, and Sonarr is set to push a manual update library command to plex on completion. Only one of these things should be enabled at once.

  1. Move duplicate file out of Plex library.

  2. Wait for episode refresh trigger / trigger manually (episode should be removed).

  3. Move duplicate file into Plex library.

  4. Wait for episode refresh trigger / trigger manually (episode should be removed). Dupe should be removed.

Finding Duplicates

To show all detected duplicates in plex:

  1. Plex › TV Shows › {TV Shows Dropdown in main window} › Episodes

  2. Plex › TV Shows › {All in main window} › Duplicates

From there you can Inspect all shows.

Legacy Plex Fixes

Fixes for early Plex servers. These generally do not appear anymore.

Backup State Configuration

Export viewstate database and files.
cd /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Plugin\ Support/Databases
echo ".dump metadata_item_settings" | sudo sqlite3 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db | grep -v TABLE | grep -v INDEX > viewstate-information-settings.sql
cd /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server
sudo cp -av Media /tmp/media-backup
sudo cp -av Metadata /tmp/metadata-backup

Reference

Restoring Plex State Configuration

Restore viewstate database and files.
cd /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Plugin\ Support/Databases
cat viewstate-information-settings.sql | sudo sqlite3 com.plexapp.plugins.library.db
cd /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server
sudo cp -av /tmp/media-backup Media
sudo cp -av /tmp/metadata-backup Metadata

Plex Stuck at Initial Startup

Stop Plex and remove Service Bundle Framework.
sudo service plexmediaserver stop
sudo ps -ef | grep -i plex
sudo kill -9 {REMAINING PIDS}
cd /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Plugins
rm -f Service.bundle Framwork.bundle
sudo service plexmediaserver start
sudo reboot