Emby Interface Unresponsive

[ShadowKindjal 21]

My Emby interface is periodically becoming completely unresponsive. The only thing that seems to fix it is restarting the docker container. I originally thought the issue was connected to scanning my library, so I disabled real time monitoring, but it still seems to be happening. Any help would be appreciated. The last event should be at the end of the log. It seems to be happening multiple times a day now. I'm running 4.9.1.80

embyserver-63898111824.txt

[Luke 42077]

Hi, there's nothing really obvious here. Are you able to use the web interface when this happens?

[ShadowKindjal 21]

No, it's usually completely unresponsive. 

Edit: Sometimes the dashboard will begin to load but none of my media comes up and I'm sitting there waiting on the blue loading circle.

Edited November 7, 2025 by ShadowKindjal

[Neminem 1518]

Check Schedule taskes and see if that happens when Scan media library task is running.

[ShadowKindjal 21]

11 minutes ago, Neminem said:

Check Schedule taskes and see if that happens when Scan media library task is running.

Mine runs at 4:15a every morning. I have the "on start-up" trigger disabled

[Neminem 1518]

Whats's the mem usage when it happens?

[ShadowKindjal 21]

Nothing out of the ordinary. CPU and RAM usage are all normal. 

[Q-Droid 989]

You seem to have an awful lot of refreshing going on. Is something changing in the libraries to make it look like episodes need to be updated?

For example, why would all of the seasons of Drive to Survive need to be refreshed during two separate time windows within the same day/log? And this is the same pattern for everything in that log, even more for SpongeBob.

 

[ShadowKindjal 21]

embyserver-63898128274.txtJust happened again. I restarted the server just after 16:00 when I realized the interface locked up again. 

[ShadowKindjal 21]

19 minutes ago, Q-Droid said:

You seem to have an awful lot of refreshing going on. Is something changing in the libraries to make it look like episodes need to be updated?

For example, why would all of the seasons of Drive to Survive need to be refreshed during two separate time windows within the same day/log? And this is the same pattern for everything in that log, even more for SpongeBob.

 

I noticed that within my logs as well but I'm unaware of anything that would be triggering that

[ShadowKindjal 21]

Disabling real-time monitoring seemed to have no effect on the issue either.

[Q-Droid 989]

There are 175k calls to TheTVDB API for metadata in the first log you uploaded and it's not even a 12 hour log.

 

 

[ShadowKindjal 21]

My libraries are setup to only refresh metadata for placeholder titles. What else could be prompting those calls?

Edit: I disabled Sonarr and Radarr from triggering refreshes. They may have been the culprit.

Edited November 7, 2025 by ShadowKindjal
Additional context

[Q-Droid 989]

What's your refresh schedule?

 

[ShadowKindjal 21]

Emby is only configured for refreshes to update placeholder episode names

[Q-Droid 989]

1 hour ago, ShadowKindjal said:

Emby is only configured for refreshes to update placeholder episode names

That's not exactly "a schedule". I was asking about the scheduled task to scan your media libraries. For some reason the server is attempting to refresh metadata for a lot of your media. Do you have something external that is touching/updating files or directories in your media libraries?

 

 

[ShadowKindjal 21]

The library scan is scheduled daily at 4:15a and the only thing that touches the files would be sonarr and radarr

[Q-Droid 989]

From the logs the scan/refresh activity doesn't align with that schedule but maybe things will quiet down now that you've disabled the triggers from sonarr and radarr. Let us know if that changed anything. Otherwise you might want to look through your media paths to see if any files or directories have new date/time stamps that shouldn't have changed. 

 

[ShadowKindjal 21]

embyserver-63898180071.txt

Just had another event and the refresh activity seems to be gone after disabling the triggers from sonarr and radarr. I noticed the interface slowed to a crawl about two hours after the triggered library scan. I suspect there might be a corrupted file that emby is hanging up on. 

[Q-Droid 989]

If it's not getting hung up on a bad media file it could be an exhausted resource in the stack as you have a very busy server with many active users.

 

[Luke 42077]

Hi, are you still having an issue with this?

[ShadowKindjal 21]

Yes, this seems to coincide with the mass library refreshes being triggered. I have no external apps triggering the refreshes and library scans are not scheduled in emby. I did re-enable real-time monitoring and that's when I noticed the mass refreshes showing up in my logs again. Since I'm not doing library scans at the moment, the monitoring was the only way for me to get new content in. I don't know why so many shows are being triggered for a refresh whenever new episodes are downloaded by sonarr, for example.

[Luke 42077]

17 hours ago, ShadowKindjal said:

I don't know why so many shows are being triggered for a refresh whenever new episodes are downloaded by sonarr, for example.

Hi, what makes you think this?

[ShadowKindjal 21]

49 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, what makes you think this?

A possibly naive process of elimination. I have no scheduled tasks that would trigger content being refreshed. I have disconnected all external applications from Emby to prevent anything from inadvertently triggering a refresh. This includes any potential cron jobs as well. I also have no scripts touching all the files in my zpool. 

Currently, each of my libraries are configured for real-time monitoring so the only changes should be coming from sonarr and radarr adding new files. 

[guunter 49]

On 11/11/2025 at 1:21 PM, ShadowKindjal said:

A possibly naive process of elimination. I have no scheduled tasks that would trigger content being refreshed. I have disconnected all external applications from Emby to prevent anything from inadvertently triggering a refresh. This includes any potential cron jobs as well. I also have no scripts touching all the files in my zpool. 

Currently, each of my libraries are configured for real-time monitoring so the only changes should be coming from sonarr and radarr adding new files. 

Are you using the local metadata that sonarr creates? This could be triggering a scan vs emby just refreshing the metadata itself without scanning