Plex playback error after successfully moving files to cache

[Nevarro]

Anyone got the problem as well that files are moved, but then Plex can't find them when they're supposed to be played? Plex shows "Playback Error: Please check that the file exists and the necessary drive is mounted." which, in my mind makes sense, because the files are missing in the respective library folders in the array, which Plex checks.

How should Plex know that those files are there, when they are not? I remember that there are different mover settings in Unraid between Array and Cache.

/mnt/user/Media/Plex/Movies

and

/mnt/cache/Media/Plex/Movies

should be the same externally in Unraid, right? So that Unraid would deal with moving things between the Array and the Cache internally.

Is it a settings issue on my end?

[Nevarro]

I think I found the solution, as described in this comment. I needed to allow the Plex Docker Container to have access to the Cache as well (by setting another path /cache pointing to /mnt/cache so that I could add the cache folder in the respective Plex library.

[Nevarro]

I still have the problem that for one show, I get the same error, even though the files are there on the Cache drive, Plex has two sources and shows that on the Array it's unavailable and on the cache drive it's there. It won't play those episodes but it does play others on the cache drive.

[PwnTwoFace]

I had a similar problem. The solution is:

Set your share "Media" to (primary storage) cache and (secondary storage) array.
Unraid combines all files from your cache and your array at /mnt/user/Media/Plex/Movies.

In the script, you use /mnt/cache/Media/Plex/Movies for moving files from the array to the cache drive, and
/mnt/user0/Media/Plex/Movies for moving them back to the array.

Plex uses the path /mnt/user/Media/Plex/Movies. For Plex, it looks like the files are always in the same spot.

/mnt/user/Media/Plex/Movies -> cache + array
/mnt/cache/Media/Plex/Movies -> only cache
/mnt/user0/Media/Plex/Movies -> only array

[Agieja]

I was wondering if you could tell me how the unraid mover would handle this.

I tried this set up but there doesn't seem to be a way to exclude the mover to not move the files back from the cache to the array. Therefore, the mover will just move the files back to the array whenever plexcache puts them in the cache.

[PwnTwoFace]

I use the Mover Tuning plugin with the following settings:

• Only move if the used Primary (cache) space exceeds this threshold: 80%
• Free down / prime up to this level of used Primary (cache) space: 60%
• Move files off Primary (cache) based on age? Yes
• Move files that are greater than this many days old: auto

So if the cache usage exceeds 80%, it will free up space down to 60%, starting with the oldest files.
The Mover runs daily, scheduled after the PlexCache script..

The Mover Tuning Plugin allows to define different behaviors per share, if the default setup doesn't suit your needs.

[Agieja]

Thanks! I will try those upcoming week.

I also liked your idea regarding shares but i solved it in a different way. Yours is probably better.

I used mergerFS to merge the two locations and then I just linked my plex library to the merged directory. Do you see any downsides to this? I might switch to your options as I feel it does not rely on external plugins.