An internet connection is required to scan library files. Please check this server's connection and try again

Plex Media Server
1

Server Version#: 1.20.0.3133
Player Version#: 4.34.4
Plex Media Server.log (3.1 MB)

PMS running in docker container on Synology NAS. When I try to scan my music library for changes I receive the message “An internet connection is required to scan library files. Please check this server’s connection and try again.”. Internet connectivity is fine.

Have seen suggestions to simply restart PMS, when I do this the library scan starts to work again, however 24 hours later it stops working again. Surely I shouldn’t need to restart PMS every day just for library scans to work?

Have turned on debug logging and tried refreshing, Plex Media Server.log attached.

2 Likes
2

Anybody?

3

I’m having the same problem with Plex running natively on Synology NAS, specifically when scanning my music library. A restart fixes it for a few hours and it stops working.

Server version : 1.19.5.3112

4

This problem just popped up for me today as I was adding new music to my library. Restarted PMS from the package center on my Synology NAS and it seems to have fixed the issue… for now. Only effected Music library, not any movies or TV ones.

5

would need to see server logs with debug logging enabled throughout.
In this log - debug logging was just enabled few minutes before capturing the log

Plex Media Server uses back end plex systems - referred to as Pubsub servers - and when the connection to one of these systems is established and dialogue continues - then an internet connection is deemed to be in place

Without debug logging I can only see that there were previously issues with connecting to these back end systems

Jul 31, 2020 05:41:33.136 [0x7fdbd97d0700] WARN - PubSubManager: Connection to 82.94.168.19 failed: Connection timed out.
Jul 31, 2020 05:41:33.136 [0x7fdbd97d0700] WARN - PubSubManager: Connection to 45.79.211.188 failed: Connection timed out.
Jul 31, 2020 05:41:33.136 [0x7fdbd97d0700] WARN - PubSubManager: Connection to 45.79.23.169 failed: Connection timed out.
Jul 31, 2020 05:41:33.136 [0x7fdbd97d0700] WARN - PubSubManager: Connection to 45.79.128.184 failed: Connection timed out.
Jul 31, 2020 05:41:33.136 [0x7fdbd97d0700] WARN - PubSubManager: Connection to 172.104.152.89 failed: Connection timed out.
Jul 31, 2020 05:41:33.136 [0x7fdbd97d0700] WARN - PubSubManager: Connection to 139.162.75.196 failed: Connection timed out.
Jul 31, 2020 05:41:33.136 [0x7fdbd97d0700] WARN - PubSubManager: Connection to 176.58.127.172 failed: Connection timed out.
Jul 31, 2020 05:41:33.136 [0x7fdbd97d0700] WARN - PubSubManager: Connection to 139.162.57.189 failed: Connection timed out.
Jul 31, 2020 05:41:33.136 [0x7fdbd97d0700] WARN - PubSubManager: Connection to 184.105.148.117 failed: Connection timed out.
Jul 31, 2020 05:41:33.136 [0x7fdbd97d0700] WARN - PubSubManager: Connection to 172.105.13.59 failed: Connection timed out.
Jul 31, 2020 05:41:33.136 [0x7fdbd97d0700] WARN - PubSubManager: Connection to 139.162.54.192 failed: Connection timed out.
Jul 31, 2020 05:41:33.137 [0x7fdbd97d0700] ERROR - EventSource: Retrying in 60 seconds.
Jul 31, 2020 06:40:36.212 [0x7fdbd9fd1700] ERROR - EventSource: Retrying in 15 seconds.
Jul 31, 2020 06:41:11.212 [0x7fdbd97d0700] ERROR - EventSource: Retrying in 30 seconds.

So please run with debug logging enabled all the time. Restart the server once debug logging is enabled.
and with scanning working after relaunch capture the server logs and the issue starts again, capture the logs again and attach both sets of logs

6

Just updating here, a few days ago I installed the latest update to the Synology NAS operating system (DSM) and rebooted the NAS. Since then this issue hasn’t reoccurred, it might still be too early to say for sure but this might have sorted it out.

I’ll update again next week if it seems to be still hanging together.

7

I was experiencing the same problem and despite dozens of comments about it I found no solutions. I started experimenting and found that if I changed the agent to Last.fm instead of Plex Music I didn’t get the error and it scanned fine. I tried changing just the scanner and several other things and narrowed it down to the agent.

I would guess it is a server side issue with the agent. Try changing that and see if it works for you.

1 Like
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The new Music scanner (just like the old Premium Music Libraries scanner) requires an internet connection - when changing the agent, you are no longer using the new Music scanner.

9

I’m getting the same error suddenly today. It’s only happening when I try and scan my Music library, not the Movies/TV libraries (even though those presumably need internet access to do metadata matching). Additionally, my server 100% has internet access. It’s running on Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS with no firewall restrictions (as verified in my firewall logs). I’ve also SSH’ed into the server and verified that I can run cURL and ping commands just fine to things on the internet.

For me, “service plexmediaserver restart” has fixed the issue for now, but I’ll keep an eye on it to see if it happens again. This has never in my several years with Plex happened, so I’m going to guess it’s some kind of flaw in the current build if all of a sudden several of us are having the issue out of nowhere.

1 Like
10

I’m getting exact same issue on my raspbery pi. working with movies but not with music. maybe music agent is down?

Edit: shutdown and restart your server solves the issue

11

Thanks for your input.

I explained in an earlier post how this arises

Plex Media Server uses back end plex systems - referred to as Pubsub servers - and when the connection to one of these systems is established and dialogue continues - then an internet connection is deemed to be in place

There could be a bug where after the connection to this backend system is lost, may be it is not re-established and a server reboot would do that.

Server logs with debug logging enabled captured when the issue arises would help - i have already referred two examples to our development team - would like to see more examples

12

I’ll enable debug logging in case the issue recurs, no problem!

13

Mine is doing this daily now, I’ll reboot in the morning and include logs. It works once and then fails when trying a second time later in the day, but only for music libraries. It’s happening on both of my servers, they were recently updated to 1.20.1.3213 (win10 and win2k16).

14

I had the issue with the Music library. Restarting the PMS did the trick (so far). It works fine now.

15

I’m having the same issue here. Restarting the server–whether through sudo service plexmediaserver restart or just literally rebooting the server–has no effect.

Incidentally, I live in a rural area, with extremely unreliable satellite internet, and Plex has been nothing but problematic since I moved here from the city. When I paid for my Lifetime Plex subscription, I thought I was paying for a reliable piece of software that would serve me just fine without broadband internet. Plex’s reliance on backend servers for basic operation is ludicrous, and absolutely cripples the software in cases like mine. Some clients, like LG’s WebOS client, just flat-out refuse to work at all, forcing me to switch to Emby.

I’d like to see an update pushed out that fixes this, sooner rather than later. It’s infuriating not being able to access music that I’ve paid for with software that I’ve paid for.

And those logs, which I’ve scanned through, contain some surprisingly sensitive information. I’m surprised to see continued advice to post them on a publicly browseable forum.

1 Like
16

Any news regarding this issue ? I’m still having this problem daily on version 1.20.3.3483 running on a Synology NAS, I have to restart the plex server everytime.

17

I also have this all the time. Can’t this be solved?
I have to ssh in my pi and restart the server everytime i the music library scanning doesnt work.
All other library’s have no issues…

1 Like
18

Getting fed up with this one, happens with my music library and no others

2 Likes
19

The issue has been seen to arise on some NAS servers. You appear to be running on Windows. I am not aware of such issues arising on windows. Does your internet drop off periodically ? Overnight ?

Would like to see logs to compare with what was seen from QNAP servers before.

See
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201643703-reporting-issues-with-plex-media-server/

https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250417-plex-media-server-log-files/

After ensuring debug logging is enabled - please restart the server and collect the server logs zip when you encounter the problem

Scanning needs access to external metadata sources so an internet connection is needed. The way this is checked is to establish if the periodic dialogue with the Plex pubsub server is still working

20

OK, there have been a couple server updates since and I am no longer seeing the above error. However Plex still does not read the metadata of any my mp3 files correctly. If asked to sort by Artist, it ignores the artist name and sorts everything by Various Artists, a phrase not found anywhere in the tag. If sort by Albums and then by Album Artists it still shows Various Artists even though that field is empty in the ID3 Metadata tag. So it appears that something is still not working with plex and basic functionality. I realise that this is not the thread for this and will continue to try and see if there is a solution