PlexMediaServer is haywire

[John M. Długosz]

Has anyone else found the PlexMediaServer (as a plug-in) to be doing crazy things to the point where if it were really this bad nobody would be using it?

It is version .9.9.12 of Plex. The plug-in page shows 0.9.9.12.504

 

[Ericloewe]

While I don't use plex, the impression I get is that it's a clumsily put together piece of software with behavior that would make any decent programmer pull his hair out.

What kind of issues are you experiencing, concretely?

 

[cyberjock]

I use plex outside of a jail (linux host) and it works great. The PBI works well for "many" but not all. It really depends on your setup, how well you know what you are doing, etc. to either properly setup Plex or be a failure with it.

 

[John M. Długosz]

What kind of issues are you experiencing, concretely?

Crazy cataloging results. Here is one of my posts.
Here is another thread.

I don't know what kind of "improper setup" might make it do something different depending on whether two albums are added before rescanning, or they are added one at a time with a rescan after each.

Maybe I'll try something else. I see two others available as plugins that do DLNA, though I think subsonic only does music and has ads or payment to use.

 

[John M. Długosz]

Here's my latest:

https://forums.plex.tv/index.php/topic/114984-plex-really-really-really-does-not-work/

Any ideas?

 

[cyberjock]

Nope. You'll find there is little sympathy for things that don't work 'right' in a jail unless you can prove it's in the jail framework FreeNAS uses. What someone chooses to do inside the jail is of their own choosing and we really don't bother dealing with the problems. No offense intended to anyone in this thread or any other thread. It's just a harsh reality of it. VMWare doesn't care what OS you run in a VM and doesn't support the OSes themselves so why would we do any different? ;)

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

Crazy cataloging results. Here is one of my posts.
Here is another thread.

I don't know what kind of "improper setup" might make it do something different depending on whether two albums are added before rescanning, or they are added one at a time with a rescan after each.

Maybe I'll try something else. I see two others available as plugins that do DLNA, though I think subsonic only does music and has ads or payment to use.

subsonic does videos but I only recommend it for music. when testing plex a bit it was much more reliable then subsonic for video transcoding, plus does metadata scrapping.

 

[raidflex]

Not sure why people are having issues with Plex, I have been using it for a while now in a jail and have multiple users streaming from my server. Even with multiple streams at the same time it works well. I have over 7000 TV episodes and couple hundred movies. I run Plex in it's own jail, I wonder if others are running it with other applications in the same jail and this is causing issues.

 

[cyberjock]

To be honest raidflex, the problem is people want it to "just work" with no thought involved. The reality is that they *do* need to have some resemblance of how this stuff works. Plex is simplified down to the most reasonable extent possible, but it still requires you to understand the technology. I'd say about 90% of users fall into this category alone. :/

 

[John M. Długosz]

I have over 7000 TV episodes and couple hundred movies. I run Plex in it's own jail, I wonder if others are running it with other applications in the same jail and this is causing issues.

My problem is with .flac (music) files. I've not gotten to movies and TV yet. It is in a jail by itself. (since it works with MP3 files, it's not an over-all configuration issue or usage error)

 

[raidflex]

My problem is with .flac (music) files. I've not gotten to movies and TV yet. It is in a jail by itself. (since it works with MP3 files, it's not an over-all configuration issue or usage error)

I would highly recommend Madsonic or Subsonic for music handling, I find it work very well and has more features and better support for different types of audio files. Plex was design specifically for video content in mind, not to say it will not work with music files. I prefer to use multiple applications that each excel in their particular area's, instead of all in one solutions.

I have a music library of over 20K songs with Madsonic and all of them are in flac.

 

[John M. Długosz]

I would highly recommend Madsonic or Subsonic for music handling, I find it work very well and has more features and better support for different types of audio files. Plex was design specifically for video content in mind, not to say it will not work with music files. I prefer to use multiple applications that each excel in their particular area's, instead of all in one solutions.

I have a music library of over 20K songs with Madsonic and all of them are in flac.

That makes sense. So you have to switch "library" from one server to another when you want to switch from music to video, rather than just changing folders within the current library being browsed? Or do you have an aggregator proxy sitting on top of it all?

Do you have Madsonic running on the FreeNAS box? If so, I'd like to know how you did that.

—John

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

That makes sense. So you have to switch "library" from one server to another when you want to switch from music to video, rather than just changing folders within the current library being browsed? Or do you have an aggregator proxy sitting on top of it all?

Do you have Madsonic running on the FreeNAS box? If so, I'd like to know how you did that.

—John

You could start with the subsonic plugin, then replace the source files in /usr/pbi/susbonic-amd64/share/subsonic with the Madsonic Standalone source files.

 

[John M. Długosz]

You could start with the subsonic plugin, then replace the source files in /usr/pbi/susbonic-amd64/share/subsonic with the Madsonic Standalone source files.

Interesting. Will that persist across boots? I mean, what in general can be changed?

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

Interesting. Will that persist across boots? I mean, what in general can be changed?

Yes it will. Not sure what you mean what can be changed?

 

[raidflex]

You could start with the subsonic plugin, then replace the source files in /usr/pbi/susbonic-amd64/share/subsonic with the Madsonic Standalone source files.

This is what I did, but I found with the latest Madsonic 5.1 Tech Demo III this does not work.

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

I can take a look at this in the future. I have a feeling you just need to rename some files and set ownership. I doubt the startup line needed to change for the latest Madsonic but you can look at that too in /usr/local/etc/rc.d/subsonic

 

[John M. Długosz]

Yes it will. Not sure what you mean what can be changed?

Files, settings stored in files. Dropping something in bin won't be lost when restarting the jail next time? Are certain directories available and others hands-off, to be changed only in some official jail description?

 

[Joshua Parker Ruehlig]

Files, settings stored in files. Dropping something in bin won't be lost when restarting the jail next time? Are certain directories available and others hands-off, to be changed only in some official jail description?

I am very confused about what you are asking.

Restarting a jail should not affect any files that are on disk.

subsonic's datadirectory is in /var/db/subsonic (or possibly /usr/pbi/subsonic-amd64/etc/subsonic if I haven't updated it recently). This is where subsonic stores its database, settings, etc. FreeNAS also stores a few variable that I pass as startup files, only: http(s), port, webroot, max memory.