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Troubleshooting

This page outlines some solutions to common issues beginners may encounter when running a Jellyfin server.

Playback Issues​

The easiest way to check for issues is by checking the logs, which can be accessed through the console for the web client or in the log directory on your server.

If media is unable to transcode, first check the ffmpeg logs.

Networking Issues​

If you can access the web interface over HTTP but not HTTPS, then you likely have an error with the certificate. Jellyfin uses a PFX file to handle HTTPS traffic. If you created the file with a password, then you will have to enter that value on the Networking page in the settings.

If you can access the server locally but not outside of your LAN, then you likely have an issue with the router configuration. Check the port forwarding settings on your router to ensure the server is visible from outside your local network. You can also enable the "Enable automatic port mapping" option on the Networking page of the server settings to have the server attempt to configure port forwarding on the router automatically if your router supports it.

If there are no logs at all relating to web traffic, even over a LAN connection, then the server hasn't been reached at all yet. This would indicate either an incorrect address or an issue somewhere else on the network.

Debug Logging​

Debug logging can be very useful when troubleshooting issues. To enable debug logging, manually editing a configuration file is required as Jellyfin does not control this from the frontend UI.

Logging options can be configured in the file logging.json in the Jellyfin configuration directory. On some platforms, there is also logging.default.json which provides default values which can then be overridden by a custom logging.json.

caution

Enabling debug logging will create a very large amount of output; as an example, simply loading the homepage will generate over 4000 lines of logs with the debug configuration below. Leaving debug logging enabled on a productive Jellyfin instance for a long period of time is not recommended, and it should be enabled only during troubleshooting.

note

If you are requested to provide extensive debug logs in an issue or during troubleshooting (e.g. more than just a few lines), please compress the resulting log files if possible as they will be very large otherwise.

To enable debug logging, create the logging.json file and add the following contents to it:

{
    "Serilog": {
        "MinimumLevel": {
            "Default": "Debug",
            "Override": {
                "": "Debug"
            }
        }
    }
}

If a logging.json file already exists, edit the Serilog MinimumLevel section to match the above but do not change any other values in the file.

Debug messages will appear in the log with the DBG tag prefixed to each line, though some components will also log additional details at INF with this configuration.

note

If the logging.json file existed before the last server start, Jellyfin will automatically reload the new configuration, once the change is made, without needing to restart. If the logging.json file was created after the last server start, a server restart will be required before the changes enabling debug logging will take effect.

To restore normal logging, you can remove the override logging.json (if you created a new file above) or restore the logging.json Serilog MinimumLevel section to its default values of:

{
    "Serilog": {
        "MinimumLevel": {
            "Default": "Information",
            "Override": {
                "Microsoft": "Warning",
                "System": "Warning"
            }
        }
    }
}

Real Time Monitoring​

This will let Jellyfin automatically update libraries when files are added or modified. Unfortunately, this feature is only supported on certain filesystems.

For Linux systems, this is performed by inotify. NFS and rclone do not support inotify, but support can be provided by using a union file system such as mergerfs with your networked file systems.

Due to the library size, you can receive an error such as this:

[2019-12-31 09:11:36.652 -05:00]  [ERR] Error in Directory watcher for: "/media/movies"  System.IO.IOException: The configured user limit (8192) on the number of inotify watches has been reached.

If you are running Debian, RedHat, or another similar Linux distribution, run the following in a terminal:

echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.d/40-max-user-watches.conf && sudo sysctl -p

If you are running ArchLinux, run the following command instead:

echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288 | sudo tee /etc/sysctl.d/40-max-user-watches.conf && sudo sysctl --system

Then paste it in your terminal and press on enter to run it. For Docker, this needs to be done on the host, not the container. See here for more information.

Uninstalling Jellyfin on MacOS​

To fully remove all data of Jellyfin from MacOS, run these commands:

rm -Rfv ~/.config/jellyfin
rm -Rfv ~/.cache/jellyfin
rm -Rfv ~/.local/share/jellyfin

Unlock locked user account​

When the admin account is locked out and the Forgot Password feature is not working, you have to unlock the user manually. To do that, you need to find the jellyfin.db file on your system. The default location on Linux is: /var/lib/jellyfin/data/. For paths in other environments, see server paths.

Linux CLI​

Before continuing, make sure that you have sqlite3 installed. When sqlite3 is not installed, you can install it under Debian based systems with apt install sqlite3. After that do the following commands/SQL query:

sqlite3 /PATH/TO/JELLYFIN/DB/jellyfin.db
UPDATE Users SET InvalidLoginAttemptCount = 0 WHERE Username = 'LockedUserName';
UPDATE Permissions SET Value = 0 WHERE Kind = 2 AND UserId IN (SELECT Id FROM Users WHERE Username = 'LockedUserName');
.exit

SQLiteBrowser​

It is also possible to use SQLiteBrowser on systems with a desktop environment. Start by opening the database inside the SQLite Browser. After opening the database, navigate to the Execute SQL Tab and execute the following query:

UPDATE Users SET InvalidLoginAttemptCount = 0 WHERE Username = 'LockedUserName';
UPDATE Permissions SET Value = 0 WHERE Kind = 2 AND UserId IN (SELECT Id FROM Users WHERE Username = 'LockedUserName');

Fix Admin User Permissions​

If the permissions for your admin account break, you can restore them using simple SQL queries.

caution

Manual changes to the database can destroy your instance beyond repair. to prevent this create a copy of your database before executing: cp /PATH/TO/JELLYFIN/DB/jellyfin.db /PATH/TO/JELLYFIN/DB/jellyfin.db.bck

Before continuing, make sure that you have sqlite3 installed. When sqlite3 is not installed, you can install it under Debian based systems with apt install sqlite3. After that do the following commands/SQL query:
You can find a list of default Paths here

sqlite3 /PATH/TO/JELLYFIN/DB/jellyfin.db

Get an Overview​

To see the current permissions for all users, you can run the following query:

SELECT Permissions.Value,Permissions.Kind,Users.Username  FROM Permissions INNER JOIN Users ON Permissions.UserID = Users.Id;

To just check permissions on your admin account, run the following query:
Please change AdminUsername to the username of your admin account

SELECT Value,Kind FROM Permissions WHERE UserId IN (SELECT Id FROM Users WHERE Username = 'AdminUsername');

The first row with an value of 1 or 0 shows if the permission is assigned or not. The second row displays the kind of permission. To get a summary for every permission you can look here

Repair Permissions​

note

Not all permissions are needed, you can remove the unnecessary ones later in the Web UI.

UPDATE Permissions SET Value = 1 WHERE (Kind = 0 OR Kind = 3 OR Kind = 4 OR Kind = 5 OR Kind = 6 OR Kind = 7 OR Kind = 8 OR Kind = 9 OR Kind = 10 OR Kind = 11 OR Kind = 12 OR Kind = 13 OR Kind = 14 OR Kind = 15 OR Kind = 16 OR Kind = 17 OR Kind = 18 OR Kind = 19 OR Kind = 20 OR Kind = 21) AND UserId IN (SELECT Id FROM Users WHERE Username = 'AdminUsername');

.exit

Text Not Rendering Properly​

Text may show up as boxes ☐☐☐☐☐☐ if fonts for the characters are not available. Installing fonts for the affected languages can solve the problem. For library cover images, please install system fonts on the server system. For subtitles, the source of fonts depends on the client. Please refer to Fonts on where to install them.