Plex update (again)

[doppiaemme]

Hi all,

I've seen this issue being reported many times but it's the first time I try updating Plex so I was wondering whether there is a fix or not. (I'm currently running 9.9.12.504).

Basically I've noticed there is an update available for Plex, however, the process initially hangs aroud 50% but it never finishes, after about 5 minutes I get an error and it goes back to the point where it shows an update available.

I remember other threads saying the process hangs longer (like half a day, because of the DB) but finally it succedes. This is not my case, as explained above.

Has anybody had better luck in updating that?

thanks

doppiaemme

 

[zuber]

I am having same problem. when I try to install Plex Media Server via Plugins tab.

it always fails. how can I fix this? I was able to install BTSYNC successfully.

 

[J. Greg Williams]

I believe the upgrade process involves backing up and then restoring the database which can be quite large depending on the size of your library. I usually kick it off at night before I go to sleep. This process just finished for me after about 9 hours. The feedback stays at the 50% for almost the entire time, but it does eventually finish.

 

[doppiaemme]

As I was saying in the first post, in my case it exits the update procedures after some minutes, it doesn't hang at 50% for longer...

 

[J. Greg Williams]

I'm sorry I misunderstood. You may need to create a new instance and the migrate the data over manually if you care about the play counts and library setups. Otherwise you could simply point it towards your data store setup your libraries and let it refresh all the metadata.

 

[doppiaemme]

I'm afraid this is not the right route for me... I cannot think of running an instance of Plex which cannot be updated...
I think I will install Plex on separate Linux VM and use FreeNAS only for storage, but at least I have full control of Plex.
If this gets fixed however the idea of running it within the nas is great

 

[J. Greg Williams]

I have not had an issue other than updates taking a long time to complete. I have been running it for almost a year now very happily. You should of course take the route you are most comfortable with.

 

[sdspieg]

But so is there another (manual? through cli?) way to update? Like the one that exists for sabnzbd ('service sabnzbd update')? I'd hate to always have to refresh the metadata when creating a new instance...

 

[cheezehead]

The larger the library, the longer the upgrade takes. Also, just because your box is "beefier" than another system doesn't necessarily mean it will run faster. The upgrade process uses bsdtar in the back-end which is single-threaded causing one of the cores to max out while the rest are idle, so in the case you have 20-core+ FreeNAS build it won't run that much faster. Installing the base Plex Jail on an SSD however, would help the upgrade time.

 

[dcherry88]

But so is there another (manual? through cli?) way to update? Like the one that exists for sabnzbd ('service sabnzbd update')? I'd hate to always have to refresh the metadata when creating a new instance...

Toss this script in the root of your plex jail and follow the directions for running it. It's what i use to update plex now.

https://github.com/mstinaff/PMS_Updater/blob/master/PMS_Updater.sh

 

[BrianDMG]

I'll second the PMS_Updater script dcherry88 just linked, and add this link to a post I made a while ago that has links to additional details about it in case you need more help. It's a great script, and you should definitely check it out before going through all that trouble.

 

[sdspieg]

Thanks to dcherry! I'll definitely try it as soon as a new version is available.

 

[pschatz100]

When you run the update, FreeNAS saves a copy of the old plugin along with a copy of the Plex database. This copy process is why the updates stay at 50% for a while (it is copying data.) If you have your jail running on slow media such as a USB thumb drive, the copy process will take a long time. If the database is large, the copy process will take a very long time. Some people have reported this part of the update taking more than 24 hours. Also, note that if the volume on which your jails are installed is not large enough to hold the archive copy along with everything else, it will hang (duh...) or die. Not that complicated, really.

I have my jails running on an 8Gb thumb drive - formatted volume size is 7.1 Gb. The total space taken up by all my jails is 4.1 Gb, and the size of my Plex database alone is 1.7Gb. After the first time I updated Plex, the space taken up by my jails was about 6 Gb. No issues - everything was running fine. During my second update, the volume filled up completely during the archive copy process and failed.

So, did I panic? No. Once I realized what had happened, I deleted the old archive copies to create sufficient room in the volume and then reran the update. No problem. One good thing about FreenNAS - the system doesn't crash when plugin updates fail to complete.

Two additional thoughts:
1) If the screen does not automatically refresh after the update process completes, you might need to click the page refresh button in the browser.
2) You have a backup copy of your Plex database - right?

 

[BrianDMG]

Toss this script in the root of your plex jail and follow the directions for running it. It's what i use to update plex now.

https://github.com/mstinaff/PMS_Updater/blob/master/PMS_Updater.sh

Looks like with today's update, Plex changed the URL structure of the Plex download, breaking the script.

 

[George51]

Looks like with today's update, Plex changed the URL structure of the Plex download, breaking the script.

I've found that too - the script doesn't update it to 0.9.10.0 - does anyone know a fix for the script?

 

[BrianDMG]

Luckily, yeah - the guy who wrote the script posts in the Plex FreeBSD forum (which I recommend you check out), and he posted this:

Fixed it. They are using https for the downloads now instead of http. I've updated it on github or you can change line 124 from

Code:

DOWNLOADURL=`grep -o "http:.*$PMSPATTERN" "$DOWNLOADPATH/$SCRAPEFILE"`

to

Code:

DOWNLOADURL=`grep -o "http:.*$PMSPATTERN" "$DOWNLOADPATH/$SCRAPEFILE"`

It's a pretty simple fix, and it definitely works.