Plex Server stops, jail still show as up

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jbrown705

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Hi all, looking for a little help with my Plex jail (iocage). I have manually installed Plex in a jail, on my server running 11.2 RC1. My jail will show that plex is still is still up, but my server goes down and is unreachable. Once i restart the jail, it comes back online. It 'seems' to happen more often when sonarr/radarr adds a files to my library, but not all the time. I don't know how to troubleshoot it and Plex isn't generating a "crash log," so i don't know if its actually crashing or there is an issue with the jail (not even sure what i should be looking for in log anyway). Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Some server specs in case its necessary/helps
z1 pool with 3 8TB WD Reds, 32GB RAM, Xeon E3 on SM board

Thanks!
-Jason
 
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Jailer

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11.3? Are you running a nightly build?
 

Jailer

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File a bug report, this shouldn't be happening.
 

sretalla

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Just to be clear... a jail can be running with the service inside it stopped... is that what is happening here?
My jail will show that plex is still is still up, but my server goes down and is unreachable. Once i restart the jail, it comes back online

how about running this command in the jail next time it happens: service plexmediaserver restart (I assume you aren't running plexpass version with that version of the command)
 

jbrown705

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Just to be clear... a jail can be running with the service inside it stopped... is that what is happening here?


how about running this command in the jail next time it happens: service plexmediaserver restart (I assume you aren't running plexpass version with that version of the command)

I am actually running the Plex Pass version, but I know what command you’re referring to. Yes that will restart it. So will restarting the jail. It does appear that the service stops with the jail still running. I don’t know if Plex crashes. I thought I read that if it really crashed it with generate a crash log labeled as such. I have no idea how to troubleshoot freenas to see if there is a log file that may tell me what is happening. I also get this on my console and in my nightly emails. I’ve posted about it too with no resolution and it not being fixed with the upgrade to RC
 

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sretalla

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Swap space errors could be somehow related to the crash of Plex inside the jail, so I would focus your time on fixing that first.

You can try looking at the output of dmesg at the CLI to see if you get something more useful to look for, but you should also search on the errors in your last post to see what could be the solution for that.
 

jbrown705

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Swap space errors could be somehow related to the crash of Plex inside the jail, so I would focus your time on fixing that first.

You can try looking at the output of dmesg at the CLI to see if you get something more useful to look for, but you should also search on the errors in your last post to see what could be the solution for that.

I ran that command (it looks like its the log of the start console), but I am not sure what I am looking for. I have tried to fix the swapspace errors, but I have had no luck. I thought it may have been due to lack of memory, so I upgraded from 8 to 32gb (which is the max my board supports). Is there something I can look at when I can see those messages on the console screen that would tell me? I have tried looking up the numbers, but there are so many it leads me down a rabbit hole.

For now I have turned off a few of the jails that i don't really use to see if that has any effect on this issues.

Is it possible a SMART scan could be interfering with things?

Thanks!
-Jason

**Update**

I have been trying to read about the swap issue and a lot of people seem to look at the graphs so i pulled one from the legacy ui and one from the new ui. I'm not entirely sure what it means, but the pattern seems to be increasing toward the end (right side) in frequency.
 
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sretalla

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So clearly that much use of such limited swap space is going to be a problem.

Normally you would have 2GB of available swap on each disk (for the first 5-10 disks in your system), so something has gone wrong there to leave you with only 2GB of swap in total.

We can also do some more investigation into why a system with 32GB of RAM thinks it needs to use SWAP at all... Are you running VMs? Do you use L2ARC? anything else we should know?
 

jbrown705

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So clearly that much use of such limited swap space is going to be a problem.

Normally you would have 2GB of available swap on each disk (for the first 5-10 disks in your system), so something has gone wrong there to leave you with only 2GB of swap in total.

We can also do some more investigation into why a system with 32GB of RAM thinks it needs to use SWAP at all... Are you running VMs? Do you use L2ARC? anything else we should know?

So, full disclosure, I don't know what L2ARC is, and needed to google it. I had some help getting this setup (and I'm not sure he was totally familiar with FreeNAS, he did know servers and other systems). I honestly don't know if I am using L2ARC. I am running a VM with Ubuntu for Ombi and Crashplan.

I am running a few jails, Plex, Sonarr, Radarr, Sabnzbd, Homebridge, Tautulli, Organizr2, Nginx. I also have nzbget and jackett, in jails, but not running.

Is there anything else I can share to help? Logs, etc? Is there something to look at in the settings I can share to help?

BTW, thank you so much for being willing to help me. It really is appreciated!
 

David Henrickson

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I am glad I looked into the support for this. I am having the EXACT same issue with mine. Same 11.2 build. Every 2-3 days it just stops working. No rhyme or reason to it. Shows "up" and all I have to do is stop it and start it and it comes back up. I use the PLUGIN version for non pass users, not the straight to jail version.
 

jbrown705

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I am glad I looked into the support for this. I am having the EXACT same issue with mine. Same 11.2 build. Every 2-3 days it just stops working. No rhyme or reason to it. Shows "up" and all I have to do is stop it and start it and it comes back up. I use the PLUGIN version for non pass users, not the straight to jail version.

Are you getting the getswapspace errors as well?
 

David Henrickson

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I am NOT; however, getting the swap errors. I do have 32Gb of Ram of which it states I am using 29Gb constantly on the main dashboard but in reporting shows peanuts. Same issue other than that. 2-3 days...Plex doesn't work. A simple stop and start and good for another 2-3 days. Its been like this since I did a clean install of 11.2 and re-brought in my pools from my issued 11.1u6 release
 

jbrown705

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I am NOT; however, getting the swap errors. I do have 32Gb of Ram of which it states I am using 29Gb constantly on the main dashboard but in reporting shows peanuts. Same issue other than that. 2-3 days...Plex doesn't work. A simple stop and start and good for another 2-3 days. Its been like this since I did a clean install of 11.2 and re-brought in my pools from my issued 11.1u6 release

Is your jail version for Plex 11.2? If so, will it let you select 11.1 to downgrade it?
 

David Henrickson

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It is 11.2-release-p4. It will not let me downgrade it. I can "update" it, but I cannot downgrade it. My pools and such are for the 11.2, so I cannot downgrade my pools anymore. I upgraded THOSE today. But it was happening before and still happening after, so I figured that wasn't the cause. I KNOW others have to be having this issue besides you and I.
 

jbrown705

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So clearly that much use of such limited swap space is going to be a problem.

Normally you would have 2GB of available swap on each disk (for the first 5-10 disks in your system), so something has gone wrong there to leave you with only 2GB of swap in total.

We can also do some more investigation into why a system with 32GB of RAM thinks it needs to use SWAP at all... Are you running VMs? Do you use L2ARC? anything else we should know?

So I did a few tests trying to figure out the swap issue and get some direction. The first thing a did was turn off several jails. The ones I turned off seems to have virtually no effect on the swap graphs. However, when i turned off Plex, I immediately saw the graph drop from 2gbs down a bit. Then I turned off all jails and saw it drop even more. I never did get it to show the inverse of what I posted (meaning the swap usage below the free like it starts after a reboot). However, it least I figured out a lever I could pull.

Next I removed my Plex jail completely. I had previously installed in a jail running 11.2, and this time I installed in a jail running 11.1. It still after a bit of time started to drive the swap mem up.

Right now I am only running a few jails just to see if I eventually hit the limits of swap and get the message.

If I can see around the time the swap began to climb, is there a log with time stamps I can compare against to see what is happening with the system around that time?

**UPDATE**

I turned off my Ubuntu VM and it had a pretty dramatic effect on the swap memory. I suspect this is the main culprit, but don't know how to fix it.

Thanks!
 
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jbrown705

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A few more updates to hopefully help troubleshoot this.

Noticed this... Plex stopped right at the end of this: (wondering why swap free is gone, does that mean its at zero?)
upload_2018-11-7_11-39-13.png


Looked at processes at that time:
upload_2018-11-7_11-39-32.png


Shell after trying to restart:
upload_2018-11-7_11-40-20.png
 
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