Document Plex database repair process

2025-01-15_Plex-Database-Repair.md

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+---
+date: 2025-01-15
+title: Plex Database Repair
+tags: 
+  - homelab
+  - plex
+  - troubleshooting
+---
+
+About a year ago, my Plex container stopped working after updating to a newer image. I was able to work around the issue
+by pinning the container version to the last working image prior to the breaking update. Over the course of this past 
+year, I've occasionally spent some time reading through forum posts, trying to upgrade to different newer versions, and
+doing my best to glean something useful from the generic database errors that I could find in the container logs. This
+week I changed up my search terms and found a solution.
+
+## The Problem
+Somehow, I ended up in a state where I had a working Plex instance, but upgrading the container to a newer image would
+fail. Either the server would fail to start outright, or it would start with all of my libraries showing up empty. 
+Rolling back to the older image always gave me a working instance, so it was never a particularly high priority for me
+to diagnose and fix the issue (tbh, I was hoping Jellyfin would address music transcoding with Android Auto and I could
+finally  just migrate to that). Eventually, I figured out that the issue was coming from a database operation as part of
+a migration that happens during container init.
+
+## The Solution
+Once I realized this was a database issue, I was able to find 
+[this Plex support article](https://support.plex.tv/articles/repair-a-corrupted-database/) that discusses repairing a
+database. I ended up rebuilding the database using the process towards the end of that article, and then I was able to
+pull the latest Docker image which started right up (after running that database migration). As far as I can tell, all
+of my libraries, watch history, playlists, etc. are still there.
+
+## Closing Thoughts
+I have no idea what happened to cause my database to become corrupted, but I believe it is the same database I started
+with when I was running Plex on Windows, over 10 years ago. I do wish Plex had friendlier tools for database 
+import/export and migration; the documented process of just copying the application data isn't particularly friendly for
+capturing backups and I have no idea how to work with that to efficiently scale out a Plex container for high 
+availability.
+
+In any case, I have Plex back up and running without any major issues :tada: . I still plan on moving to Jellyfin, but 
+it doesn't currently let me play my music library in my car (Android Auto only does direct playback), so I'm sticking 
+with Plex for the time being.