High RAM usage on Emby Server 4.9.3.0 even with Direct Play and rclone mounts

[yocker 1809]

1 hour ago, iloveparks said:

Database Cache Size - I have never changed this - it is currently 128Mb.  

Scan Media Library Task - This used to be scheduled for every 15 minutes and was like that for years.  I have used Emby since before TrueNAS had docker support and Folder Watch was buggy on TrueNAS builds back in those days, so I needed full library scans every 15 minutes.   I saw some forum posts about increasing the time between scheduled scans and/or using Folder Watch exclusively.  I chose to disable all scheduled scans and just use Folder Watch. I have been testing this off and/on the past few weeks but have not seen any difference.  As I mentioned earlier, I don't accept waiting 24 hours for my media to appear, especially when this was not the case previously.

This server does have a decent amount of memory - 256GB - however it has a lot of other duties.  This Emby instance is only for my personal use, so there has basically only ever been one stream at a time.. And memory slowly creeps up, regardless of if anything is playing it seems.

 

4.9.5.0 vs 4.9.3.0 memory consumption - still looks high (if not higher so far) for 4.9.5.0.

Comparing memory usage after ~1 day for 4.9.3.0 - it was at about 3.5GB

And looking at 4.9.5.0 after ~1 day: 5.3GB:

Yeah you would have to watch a good deal of movies for that amount of memory. 

In case it has interest to you, what was found out in my case was it was the system it self caching a lot of files and that running a library scan in scheduled task would free the memory. 

Your case does seem different though. 

Sorry I'm not of any help.

 

[iloveparks 9]

1 hour ago, yocker said:

Yeah you would have to watch a good deal of movies for that amount of memory. 

In case it has interest to you, what was found out in my case was it was the system it self caching a lot of files and that running a library scan in scheduled task would free the memory. 

Your case does seem different though. 

Sorry I'm not of any help.

 

All good, I appreciate you trying to help either way! Forcing a library scan on just one library brings my memory usage from 5.70GB to 6.25GB.

 

Can see here in the logs when the scan started and finished:

2026-08-17 09:04:26.208 Info ItemRefreshService-0HNNRAJBFAAGR:00000006: Refresh metadata requested on 84321
2026-08-17 09:04:26.208 Info ItemRefreshService-0HNNRAJBFAAGR:00000006: http/1.1 Response 204 to host1. Time: 5ms. POST http://emby_remote_ip/emby/Items/84321/Refresh?Recursive=true&ImageRefreshMode=Default&MetadataRefreshMode=Default&ReplaceAllImages=false&ReplaceAllMetadata=false&X-Emby-Client=Emby Web&X-Emby-Device-Name=Firefox Windows&X-Emby-Device-Id=x_device_id_x&X-Emby-Client-Version=4.9.5.0&X-Emby-Token=x_secret3_x&X-Emby-Language=en-us.
2026-08-17 09:04:26.258 Info ProviderManager: RefreshItem Start: 84321 CollectionFolder /config/root/default/Movies
2026-08-17 09:04:33.595 Info ProviderManager: RefreshItem Complete: 84321 CollectionFolder /config/root/default/Movies

 

[yocker 1809]

3 hours ago, iloveparks said:

All good, I appreciate you trying to help either way! Forcing a library scan on just one library brings my memory usage from 5.70GB to 6.25GB.

 

Can see here in the logs when the scan started and finished:

2026-08-17 09:04:26.208 Info ItemRefreshService-0HNNRAJBFAAGR:00000006: Refresh metadata requested on 84321
2026-08-17 09:04:26.208 Info ItemRefreshService-0HNNRAJBFAAGR:00000006: http/1.1 Response 204 to host1. Time: 5ms. POST http://emby_remote_ip/emby/Items/84321/Refresh?Recursive=true&ImageRefreshMode=Default&MetadataRefreshMode=Default&ReplaceAllImages=false&ReplaceAllMetadata=false&X-Emby-Client=Emby Web&X-Emby-Device-Name=Firefox Windows&X-Emby-Device-Id=x_device_id_x&X-Emby-Client-Version=4.9.5.0&X-Emby-Token=x_secret3_x&X-Emby-Language=en-us.
2026-08-17 09:04:26.258 Info ProviderManager: RefreshItem Start: 84321 CollectionFolder /config/root/default/Movies
2026-08-17 09:04:33.595 Info ProviderManager: RefreshItem Complete: 84321 CollectionFolder /config/root/default/Movies

 

I mean a library scan from the task schedule menu.
Running that normally returns memory usage back to normal for me.

[iloveparks 9]

53 minutes ago, yocker said:

I mean a library scan from the task schedule menu.
Running that normally returns memory usage back to normal for me.

Ah gotcha, I kicked off the scan library from the scheduled task section and see the same behavior RAM usage increases but never comes back down. Now at 7GB used. 

[yocker 1809]

23 minutes ago, iloveparks said:

Ah gotcha, I kicked off the scan library from the scheduled task section and see the same behavior RAM usage increases but never comes back down. Now at 7GB used. 

Damn, sorry to hear that.  
Well.. Was worth a try since it works for me.