@jfconde
Well in all fairness…
Maybe Plex lies to it’s Ninjas and Employees like they do to the community.
@“MovieFan.Plex” is saying the exact same thing as @cayars
Sooo. Either a change was made or not. Those two guys say no… I happen to trust both of them. They are just informing us of what they know…
Maybe the changes you are seeing are cosmetic only??
Or more likely, They simply are not aware of any changes having been made.
Don’t know if the truth will come out or not…
No sense of flogging a dead horse here.
I never thought I would stop using PMS, but this issue could be the straw that broke the camel’s back for me!!!
@jjrjr1 said: @jfconde
Well in all fairness…
Maybe Plex lies to it’s Ninjas and Employees like they do to the community.
@“MovieFan.Plex” is saying the exact same thing as @cayars
Sooo. Either a change was made or not. Those two guys say no… I happen to trust both of them. They are just informing us of what they know…
Maybe the changes you are seeing are cosmetic only??
Or more likely, They simply are not aware of any changes having been made.
Don’t know if the truth will come out or not…
No sense of flogging a dead horse here.
I never thought I would stop using PMS, but this issue could be the straw that broke the camel’s back for me!!!
I’ve no doubt Plex lies to those guys, but they didn’t quite say “no” did they? It’s “I don’t think . . .” or “I’m not aware . . .” . Neither one of them seems to be willing to just try the new beta and see the changes. Seems like they’ve been ordered not to acknowledge the changes that were made.
The changes to the auth system are both cosmetic and functional and obvious in both ways. Don’t see how anyone how actually tried it could miss them.
yeah… I know you have been here for awhile… but c-mon Carlo
“I don’t think Plex made any changes on purpose lately to force the authentication requests some are seeing. I know they are looking into it.”
what … the majic plex fairies just showed up at the 4730 build and it just stopped working on its own? Of course Plex ‘did something’ otherwise… wait for it… it would still work.
the most common issue here is during storms, outages, DoS attacks against plex or the net in general… our servers should still work locally to serve out OUR content … without the permission of the ‘mothership’
so if you ‘for a fact know they are looking into it’ … and this was not ‘on purpose’ but a very believable for plex screwup that slipped through their non existing Q&A and IV&V testing… then… yeah… lets hope they un-dick it somewhere in the near future…
@jjrjr1 said:
Well in all fairness…
Maybe Plex lies to it’s Ninjas and Employees like they do to the community.
@“MovieFan.Plex” is saying the exact same thing as @cayars
Plex employees are saying the same thing than ninjas who are saying the same thing than some selected regulars here in the forum. That started some weeks ago where some of the regulars “unexpectedly” changed their tone and behaviour here in the forum.
@jfconde said:
I’ve no doubt Plex lies to those guys, but they didn’t quite say “no” did they? It’s “I don’t think . . .” or “I’m not aware . . .” . Neither one of them seems to be willing to just try the new beta and see the changes. Seems like they’ve been ordered not to acknowledge the changes that were made.
I’ve tried the beta and I don’t see any changes. You say that the login screen changed, but that is the PlexWeb app, which is still on the same version in 1.11.1 as it was in 1.11.0, so there are no changes. If you are seeing something different, please provide screenshots so I can see what you see.
I can understand frustrations over this specific topic its just like if you ever had satellite TV and when the weather is bad you lose reception?!?!? what else am I supposed to do when the weather is bad go out and play?
I know in the past I have used Plex offline with supported Plex clients but I also don’t go around pulling my internet often so I will attempt myself to disconnect my internet and see if I can connect locally from any of my clients and report back. Like Rick always says… “It’s not that I don’t trust you… I don’t trust anyone”
I mainly use Android phones, Samsung TVs and PMP on windows.
I am on Version 1.11.1.4753
I am working off of the same information we have all seen here and am not aware of any conspiracy to remove this functionality or change the way it is already documented in the above link.
I was able to open Plex on My Samsung TVs and play stuff while having a manual server specified, I was also able to use Plex on my Android client with manual servers specified. I tried to open PMP on my laptop and it failed.
This is what I learned from this experience.
All my TVs I have set to “Auto Login” so they require no PIN same as my phone so when I open Plex it does not do the user switching thing which ALWAYS REQUIRES INTERNET. in PMP I did not have this set or manual servers defined so when I opened it from scratch it was unable to connect at all, so get that setup if you want it to work offline before you are offline.
So Plex without internet works but I think the user switching piece is what causes some issues so if you are already logged in and you lose internet its no problem but if you intend to use Plex 100% offline its probably not a good solution for you.
When I am offline I just sync stuff to my phone so I can watch it on an airplane and have screwed myself before when I sync content to user X and user Y is signed into Plex and you cant switch offline which is a terrible place to be.
So to summarize I am not aware of any plan to remove this functionality and the way it works today is a little twonky but does work, you just need to know what you are doing to get it to work.
I was running 4730 and tried the test where the server was logged in and pulled my routers connection to the WAN. NOTHING worked. No clients, iOS, TCL smart TV running ROKU etc would play. I could not even get into my server via xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:32400 just said unreachable … this was not standard behavior.
I updated today to 4752 and ran the same test… ios and ROKU can now connect… but still could not reach my server via web interface… locked out.
After connecting WAN and going to my headless servers webpage, I had to go into SETTINGS – WEB – SHOW ADVANCED – ALLOW FALLBACK CONNECTIONS -> SAME NETWORK AS SERVER
otherwise I would be locked out of my headless server. if this setting is not set when your internet connection goes down and you run a headless server, you will have no access to plex on you local server… and cant change other security settings.
the clients are likely running on cached credentials… I dont know how many days they live without being updated.
so it appears that:
1: whatever security hardening they have been doing… the web interface is now locked up tight… and if you dont alter the security settings you will be locked out in an outage.
2: clients MAY live depending on what version you are running, security settings set, and time to live of the current cached certificates.
This was likely caused by the security hardening Plex is doing in response to issues regarding recent security breaches.
its also an issue in that we have said now for a while that the settings for plex are getting scattered thoughout mulitple places in the server web interface and in the clients… further… we have asked for awhile now that we are able to ‘push’ security settings to clients connected to servers vs clients getting to set their own …
I was running 4730 and tried the test where the server was logged in and pulled my routers connection to the WAN. NOTHING worked. No clients, iOS, TCL smart TV running ROKU etc would play. I could not even get into my server via xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:32400 just said unreachable … this was not standard behavior.
That right there sounds bad. When I lose internet connection, I’m still able to connect to my server from another computer. I don’t run a headless server so maybe there is something different. What OS are you running? It could be OS specific. I use Windows and cannot reproduce being locked out.
any attempt to connect to the servers web address from its local subnet is met with a message that the server is unreachable and to check your internet connection when it should not even be trying to use the internet…as I specified the address on my subnet it should not even need DNS.
having to open insecure web connections for every address on my subnet to access the web services of the plex server seems like asking for trouble, but right now that is the only way of not getting locked out if the internet drops … this is only as of the last 2 beta drops… dont recall this behaviour defore 1.11.0
and when I say nothing work with the previous beta… not even openPHT with the server address manually set would work at that usually connects as a last resort. 4752 fixed the 2 clients I tried but did not fix the web client.
Oh, your’re using a proxy. I have no idea what the expected behavior is with a proxy involved.
Can you confirm you are using the regular 1.11.1 beta build and not that special forum only .119 version? That may behave differently due to the new build system.
The proxy was setup per plex’s guidelines and it has functioned flawlessly for the almost 2 years its been up. No changes that I have noted.
Can you provide me a link to the guidelines you are referring to? I’m not aware of anything Plex has released. If you’ve had it for 2 years, the info in it may have changed.
@cayars said:
I don’t think Plex made any changes on purpose lately to force the authentication requests some are seeing. I know they are looking into it.
Carlo
Why is it necessary to think? Just spin up an instance of the latest beta and try it, the differences are obvious.
Look at my words. I didn’t say nothing changed, obviously something did change. I said “on-purpose”. Plex is looking to see what changed and why. Hopefully this will get fixed if it can be.
@jfconde said:
I’ve no doubt Plex lies to those guys, but they didn’t quite say “no” did they? It’s “I don’t think . . .” or “I’m not aware . . .” . Neither one of them seems to be willing to just try the new beta and see the changes. Seems like they’ve been ordered not to acknowledge the changes that were made.
Come on, that’s ridiculous. If Plex was to start telling me lies, do you think I’d risk putting my name on posts or stick around volunteering my time? I’m only a Ninja but the other comment was made by an employee who can look at the code and comments. This is just crazy talk.
So it appears this is a “fringe” type instance that is not a normal installation or something that would get tested during normal QA of both staff or Ninjas before release. That is good to know.
With that said, I have seen clients requesting authentication when they normally wouldn’t so there is something here that’s related. It’s being talked about and investigated.
Keep in mind using a reserve proxy isn’t the most secure setup to run.
first off… ‘using a reverse proxy is not safe’ … um… well you just dont understand reverse proxy then… not to mention you have not idea what I am using it for… nor do you understand how I have mine set up… so your statement is uninformed and just wrong.
first off… I dont have my reverse proxy setup to provide any proxy outside of my own subnet. I have no ports open on my firewall like a full usage reverse proxy would… IE open port 443 only to push mulitple services to one or more secure hosts behind the firewall.
I only use a reverse proxy on my network so I can get to various services on that host without having to remember each port number of each service… IE and can type server.local\plex to get plex vs having to type server.local:32400 and home assistant server.local\home vs having to remember its port.
you are focusing on the wrong thing making uninformed excuses for the issue at hand… as I said … it has nothing to do with the proxy… plex is still using its normal path out to the internet… through its own port that is open on the firewall…
now the one thing that may be a factor is what I have been bitching about for years and so have many others that if a host has multiple NICS on the host… plex binds to whichever one it wants…
in my instance… 192.xxx goes to the internet… and 10.55.xxx is internal network to the esxi on the host for vm to vm traffic… it has no path to the interent and any ping to 192.xx does not work… yet plex binds to 10.55xx adapter showing it as fully accessable to the internet… NICE PROGRAMMING MORONS… the excuse from plex has been that it doesnt matter what is shown there… plex listens to EVERY PORT on the host… nice… real secure… more importantly… if its showing 10.55 … what is it usging for its internal logic for those security settings that allow this or that on ‘ITS OWN SUBNET’ is it thinking the subnet is 10.55 … because that would be WRONG…
there is so much crap programming here I dont know where to begin…
but it has nothing to do with the proxy… just ask how many others that are having the issue are running a proxy… I would say none…
I did not say “using a reverse proxy is not safe”.
What I said was “Keep in mind using a reserve proxy isn’t the most secure setup to run.”
Well, I most certainly do understand how reverse proxy servers work and how they specifically work with Plex and what changes/setup you have to make in Plex to get a RP to work with it.
I certainly don’t want to get into a massive discussion about this as it’s beside the point of the thread. However, I will stand by my statement.
I’ll also stand by the other statement I made that this isn’t a typical setup and isn’t something that is typically tested against during QA by staff or by Ninjas (at least that I know of).
That doesn’t mean, no one is going to look into it or try and make fixes if needed. Obviously you see MovieFan.Plex here asking questions to learn about the setup and what is/isn’t working, so you know it’s on Plex’s radar.
In your last message you just added another new element I didn’t see mentioned before (apologize if it was mentioned) of the fact you server is running under ESXi with multiple NICs. This is also important to know to help diagnose the issue.
No one is making EXCUSES as you mention. We are just trying to get to the bottom line of the setup and what is or isn’t working. You can’t diagnose or fix something you don’t understand.
Carlo
PS I’m personally not a fan of the way NICs or Ports are managed via Plex either so you aren’t alone in that.
again… i know you to be a long time and active member here… but also as I have noticed over the years as plex has poached / converted / brainwashed whatever these people into paying positions they all seem to change their tune and unanimously beging singing the same … plex is great and without flaw tune…
now on to the proxy…
again to be clear… this is not a full, external to the internet proxy… and NO changes have been made to plex server, its ports, or any of its interet settings… period…
the reverse is merely translating internal to my own subnet… ports to human readable names… but the reverse proxy addresses are not being used for official plex communication. i.e… clients are not using proxy… they are using gdm discovery… and plex sees my server by port not proxy etc…
the fact that a host, a host vm, etc having multiple nics is not … and should not be an issue as in todays market just about everything is now comming with multiple nics…
if your software were coded with even a modicrum of skill… multiple nics would be a non issue however plex’s sloppy approach to overcome network issues by basically listening to every interface on the host is a BIG issue…
