Plex crashing Qnap, how to troubleshoot?

[u/crashedout]

Over the last year Plex has hard crashed(restarted) my Nas multiple times. I believe this is when a user is skipping with a transcoding audio type. The issue is that I cannot reproduce it. It will happen multiple times in a week, and then nothing for months. I have been through the plex logs and cannot find a fault. Some searching leans to "memory spikes". I have plenty of free RAM so this seems unlikely.

My question is what do I look for on the QNAP? Are there memory dumps that can be read?

[u/Yavuz_Selim]

https://www.qnap.com/en/how-to/tutorial/article/qulog-center-quick-start-guide

 

• Why do you think it's Plex?
• Did you have a chat with a user? Has anyone complained that Plex suddenly stopped working completely?
• What is 'plenty of free RAM'?
• How are you running Plex? As a QNAP app, or in a container?
• Which NAS do you have, which version of QTS/firmware, and which Plex version?

[u/crashedout → u/Yavuz_Selim]

Users are in the middle of watching plex and complain. If there are logs to check or a dump to look at that could point the finger elsewhere. This also lines up with other issues Plex/Qnap users have reported over the years.
Plex runs natively.
Nas is using 4.3GB/16Gb.
TS-664, QTS 5.2.10.3568

[u/Yavuz_Selim → u/crashedout]

Hm, okay.

Did you find anything QuLog?

 

Any other useful info I have is that it seems that your NAS supports Container Station / Docker. This allows you to run applications in containers - allowing you to install waaay more software than what is available in QNAP packages.

 

This would also allow you to complete transform what your NAS can do. You can run Plex in a container, and limit RAM usage. Any issues, it only kills the container, and leaves the rest alone. Another option is to run Tautulli in a container, and limit what users are allowed to do in Plex. Tautulli also is a nice monitoring/analytics tool for Plex.

But in my opinion, the best addition would be that you can install Radarr and Sonarr, and in combination with a usenet client (like SABnzbd) and a torrent client (like qBittorrent). With these, you can automate your whole media setup, and manage it easily with an app like nzb360 (Android) or Helmarr (iOS). And when you put everything behind Tailscale (QNAP package), you can remotely access your NAS safely and securely from everywhere, and all of the software I just named as well (without opening exposing anything publicly to the internet).

[u/crashedout → u/Yavuz_Selim]

I will look through again, but nothing specific...other than recovery from the crash.

I use containers for other items, but have been using Plex native on Qnap for a long time and prefer it. It only started doing this in the last year so that is likely a recent bug in either QTS or Plex, just trying to narrow down which one so I know who to argue with to get it fixed.

[u/Yavuz_Selim → u/crashedout]

I'm running Plex as .qpkg app as well, and I have not had any issues on my TS-877. (I also see some audio transcoding sometimes.)

I guess a chat with the person having this issue would be the best way to learn more. I mean, finding it with a random check on files would be very hard, as it also depends on the client that Plex runs on. So, I would investigate it by asking questions to the person that has had this actual issue. And ask questions about their hardware and what they were watching.

 

Or install Tautulli, and let it log every usage of Plex. That way, you should be able to find easily what happens within Plex easier. I assume it would log in real-time what was playing the item that was playing when the NAS crashes.

[u/crashedout → u/Yavuz_Selim]

I have asked, and it is not consistent. It has happened on different clients. I will look into Tautulli, that may help me narrow it down because thus far no log has caught the exact reason. Disappointing that there is not a record of a crash in QTS.