Plex Media Server Plugin causes entire FreeNAS system to freeze

[Jrjy3]

I've been running FreeNAS for quite a while now, and there's only one problem I haven't yet figured out how to fix. I use SickRage and CouchPotato to find and process media, which is then copied to a directory Plex can read from. Everything works fine for the most part, but more recently (starting about two or three months ago), starting playback of a video in Plex (or sometimes scrubbing around while watching the video) causes the whole system to freeze.

When I say the whole system freezes, I mean all of it. All CIFS shares freeze, all plugins stop responding, there's no Web GUI, and the system itself doesn't respond when I type on the keyboard.

There are occasional times when the system will recover itself 1-5 hours later, but I usually have to end up doing a hard reset because nothing at all responds.

I've tried installing the plugin from the web interface as well as using this guide to install it manually, but both installations have the same result.

Here are my specs:

Processor: AMD FX-6350 3.9GHz 6-Core Processor
Motherboard: Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 Micro ATX
Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 ECC Memory (Part #CT2KIT102472BA160B)
Storage: 4x 3TB Seagate NAS Drives
Graphics: Diamond Radeon HD 5450 512MB Video Card​

I really appreciate anyone's help.

 

[Jrjy3]

Bump...

 

[jgreco]

No mere userland process should be able to cause your NAS to fail. This suggests you have a hardware issue somewhere. Perhaps you should take the system offline and run hardware stress tests.

 

[Jrjy3]

No mere userland process should be able to cause your NAS to fail. This suggests you have a hardware issue somewhere. Perhaps you should take the system offline and run hardware stress tests.

Thanks for the tip. I just finished running long S.M.A.R.T. tests and all drives passed. I'll continue testing the other components when I have time.

I ran a Memtest86+ 48 hour test when I first got the RAM, but I'll do another just in case the memory is failing now for some reason.

I'm also looking at CPU stress tests that I might be able to run from a Linux live CD. I'm thinking maybe the stock cooler I'm using for the CPU isn't enough to cool it properly when encoding media. So far, the only thing I've found is to run the "stress" command and then use htop to monitor the CPU/memory usage.

I haven't had any problems while transferring files at gigabit speeds, but I figure I'll use NetPIPE or netperf to stress the network as well.

If you can think of any other tests I should run or things I should do, I'd appreciate hearing them.

 

[Jrjy3]

Using an Ubuntu LiveCD, I was unable to reproduce any sort of hardware error. Under full load, the CPU maxed out at 67° C.

All the hard drives passed both long, short, and conveyance S.M.A.R.T. tests. The memory passed a 24 hour Memtest86+ test.

I have no idea what's causing the issue. If anyone has any more ideas, I'd love to hear them.

 

[ninjabilly]

Take out the GPU, verify the install medium be it usb flash drives have no errors, even try a fresh install to new flash drive/s and see if the problem is still present.

 

[SweetAndLow]

I've been running FreeNAS for quite a while now, and there's only one problem I haven't yet figured out how to fix. I use SickRage and CouchPotato to find and process media, which is then copied to a directory Plex can read from. Everything works fine for the most part, but more recently (starting about two or three months ago), starting playback of a video in Plex (or sometimes scrubbing around while watching the video) causes the whole system to freeze.

When I say the whole system freezes, I mean all of it. All CIFS shares freeze, all plugins stop responding, there's no Web GUI, and the system itself doesn't respond when I type on the keyboard.

There are occasional times when the system will recover itself 1-5 hours later, but I usually have to end up doing a hard reset because nothing at all responds.

I've tried installing the plugin from the web interface as well as using this guide to install it manually, but both installations have the same result.

Here are my specs:

Processor: AMD FX-6350 3.9GHz 6-Core Processor
Motherboard: Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 Micro ATX
Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 ECC Memory (Part #CT2KIT102472BA160B)
Storage: 4x 3TB Seagate NAS Drives
Graphics: Diamond Radeon HD 5450 512MB Video Card​

I really appreciate anyone's help.

You have some very funky hardware for freenas. I agree that you should remove the graphics card and try again. If that doesn't work look into getting a better supported hardware platform.

 

[Jrjy3]

Take out the GPU, verify the install medium be it usb flash drives have no errors, even try a fresh install to new flash drive/s and see if the problem is still present.

I haven't thought about the GPU causing the problem, so I'll try that out later today. As for the flash drive, I recently reinstalled FreeNAS on another flash drive due to an unrelated problem, but I'm still having the problem with Plex. Unfortunately, it seems the issue is more complicated than that :(

You have some very funky hardware for freenas. I agree that you should remove the graphics card and try again. If that doesn't work look into getting a better supported hardware platform.

As I said above, I'll try running it without a GPU to see if that's the problem. When you say I have funky hardware, do you mean the CPU and motherboard? The reason I picked the hardware I did is because joeschmuck uses a similar configuration. He has a CPU from the same generation and is using the same motherboard. I was already looking at a configuration similar to his when I saw his specs in his signature, so I went with it because he seems to be an experienced user.

 

[joeschmuck]

So I really doubt the problem is GPU related however I would run another Memtest86 on the system, run it for an appreciable period of time (3 passes minimum) just to see if you have any RAM failures. But even if your RAM starts to fail, or if you run a CPU stress test and it fails, it could be the power supply, motherboard, etc... This is where spare parts come in handy, if you have them laying around.

How about a little more info since this was working and now it's not...
1) What version of FreeNAS are you running?
2) How full are your hard drives (post output of "zfs list" & "zpool list")?
3) Have you tried to delete Plex and reinstall it?
4) If you have multiple areas to watch via Plex, does it fail on one place or all places?
5) Have you streamed video via CIFS to a computer and seen if it crashes? (You can start a movie and walk away, and just keep doing it to see if you can cause a failure, and manually scrub if you need to)
6) If you wanted to check to see if it's the GPU, just power off the system, pull the card, power up the system and ensure you can access the GUI. If so then you will save some power too. I still doubt it's the graphics card but I would think it's a last ditch effort.
7) For your playback device, are you sure it's not at fault?
8) Have you checked out your network to ensure there is nothing wrong with it (replace any switches or cables)? I'm not asking you to do that yet, just if you have done it.

Now you don't have to do all these things before responding, answer the questions first and if some of the questions lead you to doing some testing/troubleshooting then that is good. I'd really like to see how full your drives are.

I'm outta here for the night. If you post something, maybe someone else will jump in with guidance, otherwise I'll check back in about 10 hours.

 

[Fuganater]

Why in gods name do you have a GPU in a server?

 

[jgreco]

Why in gods name do you have a GPU in a server?

Needed a space heater ;-)

 

[Jrjy3]

Why in gods name do you have a GPU in a server?

I needed it for setup of the system, and I left it in because I occasionally use the system to boot from an Ubuntu LiveCD. It's the cheapest graphics card I could find. It's a god-awful fan-less card that had a picture of the ultra-polygonal Lara Croft on the front :P

 

[Jrjy3]

So I really doubt the problem is GPU related however I would run another Memtest86 on the system, run it for an appreciable period of time (3 passes minimum) just to see if you have any RAM failures. But even if your RAM starts to fail, or if you run a CPU stress test and it fails, it could be the power supply, motherboard, etc... This is where spare parts come in handy, if you have them laying around.

How about a little more info since this was working and now it's not...
1) What version of FreeNAS are you running?
2) How full are your hard drives (post output of "zfs list" & "zpool list")?
3) Have you tried to delete Plex and reinstall it?
4) If you have multiple areas to watch via Plex, does it fail on one place or all places?
5) Have you streamed video via CIFS to a computer and seen if it crashes? (You can start a movie and walk away, and just keep doing it to see if you can cause a failure, and manually scrub if you need to)
6) If you wanted to check to see if it's the GPU, just power off the system, pull the card, power up the system and ensure you can access the GUI. If so then you will save some power too. I still doubt it's the graphics card but I would think it's a last ditch effort.
7) For your playback device, are you sure it's not at fault?
8) Have you checked out your network to ensure there is nothing wrong with it (replace any switches or cables)? I'm not asking you to do that yet, just if you have done it.

Now you don't have to do all these things before responding, answer the questions first and if some of the questions lead you to doing some testing/troubleshooting then that is good. I'd really like to see how full your drives are.

I'm outta here for the night. If you post something, maybe someone else will jump in with guidance, otherwise I'll check back in about 10 hours.

1) FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201512121950 - I usually upgrade whenever my system notifies me of an update via email.
2) Output of "zfs list": http://pastebin.com/tazZMWZk
Output of "zpool list": http://pastebin.com/tSW3Q5zU
3) I've reinstalled three or four times, as well as manually installing the plugin using the method given in this guide.
4) I haven't tried viewing from a different device/location. I'll give it a try and see what happens.
5) I quickly opened a movie and scrubbed all around it for about a minute, and there was no crash doing that, so I'll start a movie when I get up tomorrow and see how that goes.
6) I removed the GPU earlier today, so we'll see what happens.
7) I'm not entirely sure it's not the playback device, but I'll try using another device and see if I get the same result.
8) My NAS is connected directly to the router from the ISP (which we got about a year ago). I have a ton of spare ethernet cables, so I'll switch them out.

Thanks for the detailed response! I hadn't thought about some of those things, so if what I've changed already doesn't fix the problem, hopefully I'll be able to think of some more possible spots for error.

 

[joeschmuck]

On your playback device, what is it specifically? Also, have you made a change to the quality of the videos such as now you are using more BluRay rips with a higher bit rate and maybe the combination is slipping up?

So your pool looks fine, lots of available space so i don't see that as being a problem.

Have you made any changes/additions to your shares, meaning with reference to your video location? Do you have say "/media" within the Plex jail shared with two or more external destinations like maybe "vol1/media/movies" and "vol1/media/music" and within the jail both point to "/media"? Hey, I'm leaving no stone un-turned.

Also, make sure you run that Memtest86 test, get a few good passes out of it to rule out a hardware failure.

 

[Jrjy3]

On your playback device, what is it specifically? Also, have you made a change to the quality of the videos such as now you are using more BluRay rips with a higher bit rate and maybe the combination is slipping up?

So your pool looks fine, lots of available space so i don't see that as being a problem.

Have you made any changes/additions to your shares, meaning with reference to your video location? Do you have say "/media" within the Plex jail shared with two or more external destinations like maybe "vol1/media/movies" and "vol1/media/music" and within the jail both point to "/media"? Hey, I'm leaving no stone un-turned.

Also, make sure you run that Memtest86 test, get a few good passes out of it to rule out a hardware failure.

I mainly stream to the web client on my desktop. I've experienced this problem when streaming both 360p video as well as a high bitrate 1080p video.

I'm not quite sure what you're asking with the shares... I can't take a screenshot right now because I'm running Memtest86 (it's at two successful passes right now), but I only have two shares in the jail, "/vol1/media/movies" and "/vol1/media/series".

If/when the Memtest86 test succeeds, I'll take the GPU out and run it like that for a few days to see if, somehow, that's causing the problem.

 

[joeschmuck]

Well it's a good indication that MemTest86 is looking good.

The shares is exactly what you posted, no need for a screen shot. This is fine so long as you do not try to share to the same directory level within the jail, which you are not.

Again, I really doubt it's the GPU causing your issues but who knows. Lets say for argument sake, which the GPU removed you no longer have the problem. Then you still need to determine if it's the GPU or the power supply because of the current draw of the GPU may stress the power supply. Although if MemTest86 passes with flying colors, then I think neither one are the issue and we are back to either Plex, Your Plex Player, a network interface component. And you are not using WiFi to transfer this data, are you? Unless your device is specifically designed for wireless operation of course. My daughters TV is on WiFi and it works great, both with Netflix and Plex and DLNA.

Hey, another option is to ensure the DLNA service is turned on in Plex and get your player to use the DLNA vice Plex, see if that results in locking up.

There are a lot of things to do in order to isolate the problem so it will take time. If you find something which will cause it to fail quickly or just makes it highly reproducible, pass that scenario along to us so we can try to mimic your situation.

You know, I do have a problem with Plex when I pause a movie for an extended period of time, I cannot resume and I need to start the movie over from the beginning, and that is using my Roku 3 which is hardwired into my network. Fortunately I do not pause my movies often.

 

[Jrjy3]

Well it's a good indication that MemTest86 is looking good.

The shares is exactly what you posted, no need for a screen shot. This is fine so long as you do not try to share to the same directory level within the jail, which you are not.

Again, I really doubt it's the GPU causing your issues but who knows. Lets say for argument sake, which the GPU removed you no longer have the problem. Then you still need to determine if it's the GPU or the power supply because of the current draw of the GPU may stress the power supply. Although if MemTest86 passes with flying colors, then I think neither one are the issue and we are back to either Plex, Your Plex Player, a network interface component. And you are not using WiFi to transfer this data, are you? Unless your device is specifically designed for wireless operation of course. My daughters TV is on WiFi and it works great, both with Netflix and Plex and DLNA.

Hey, another option is to ensure the DLNA service is turned on in Plex and get your player to use the DLNA vice Plex, see if that results in locking up.

There are a lot of things to do in order to isolate the problem so it will take time. If you find something which will cause it to fail quickly or just makes it highly reproducible, pass that scenario along to us so we can try to mimic your situation.

You know, I do have a problem with Plex when I pause a movie for an extended period of time, I cannot resume and I need to start the movie over from the beginning, and that is using my Roku 3 which is hardwired into my network. Fortunately I do not pause my movies often.

I left the Memtest86 test running for a while, it got through 7 successful passes, so that looks pretty good :D

When I play a video via the DLNA service, the entire video gets copied to a temporary folder before it starts playing. It doesn't stream the same way the web player does.

I just realized that I've been having the problem mostly when watching a specific TV show that was encoded in AVI format at a pretty low resolution/bitrate (about 350 MB for a single 45-minute episode). I wonder if the AVI format is what's causing the problem. I'll manually re-encode a few episodes as a test to see if that's what's causing the problem.

Once again, thanks for your help with this problem. You've been very helpful and I haven't given you anything to make you want to help me. :D Happy Holidays!

 

[Jailer]

The behavior you're describing sounds like a stability problem due to transcoding. You're listed components look to be up to the task but what are you running for a power supply and do you have another one laying around that you can try? One more thing to check is CPU temp when it's freezing up on you to make sure it's not overheating.

 

[Jrjy3]

The behavior you're describing sounds like a stability problem due to transcoding. You're listed components look to be up to the task but what are you running for a power supply and do you have another one laying around that you can try? One more thing to check is CPU temp when it's freezing up on you to make sure it's not overheating.

I bought a new 600W Corsair power supply when I first built it. I don't remember the exact model, but it's at least 80+ Bronze, so it should be capable of powering a CPU and four hard drives XD

I initially thought it was overheating as well, but FreeNAS doesn't play well with AMD CPUs in terms of temperature readings. From what I understand, for some it works fine, for others, it's spotty, and then CPUs like mine don't even report a temperature. However, I did boot into an Ubuntu LiveCD and run a 100% load stress test on it, and it got up to 67°, but it was still stable. That doesn't mean it's not overheating while transcoding, but I usually stream in the original quality, so it shouldn't be utilizing too much CPU at all.

Before I made this thread, I was going to buy a Hyper 212 Evo and use that, but I figured I'd see if anyone else can come up with a solution before I go and spend $30 on a cooler. I still might do that if we don't find a solution soon...

 

[Jrjy3]

Here's an update just to give a little more information.

I've noticed that Plex always says there's an update available, even when it's updated through the plugins page in the FreeNAS GUI. I remember there's a script called PMS Updater that manually fetches the most recent Plex update, but it's never done anything in the past. I decided to retry it, and I was successful in updating Plex to the most recent version listed on FreshPorts. I hadn't realized you need the -a flag to actually apply the update instead of just download it.

I've made a lot of changes recently, and I haven't watched too much stuff recently, so I don't know if something I've already done has fixed it. Even though I probably won't be able to pinpoint which change actually fixed the problem, hopefully something I've done so far will have worked. I'll be able to test further tomorrow evening.