I’ve been searching around for a native solution as well without luck… So I wrote a program that will allow you to use PIA VPN client on your PMS machine and still allow remote access without the split tunnel issues. Many of the issues people like me have been facing are due to the versatility of Plex so don’t get upset with them if they cannot account for edge cases. Albeit, their support on topics like these have been almost non-existent, so be upset about that instead.
I think the issue is Plex is brokering the remote connection on their server once your remote device is registered and the registration process happens through an API call authenticated by your account. It’s likely that when routing Plex through the VPN (if it’s a managed service) the connection back to your PMS is upgraded to a socket maybe and starts port-hopping? I really wasn’t interested into digging into the why. Regardless, this traffic is being filtered out somehow.
Plex Team - I would expect that you would take some of the more complex issues to be investigated by the team and possibly added to the backlog, this isn’t happening, fix it… Is there a backlog that we can review, or is the transparency of Plex slowly becoming opaque? Maybe I am completely off course here and too blind to see what I am looking for, but all issues I have had with Plex have either been self-resolved (I am a freaking dev-ops engineer, not an average Joe user) or the assistance needed was found on Reddit and similar. I ave literally scoured forums on Plex with hardly any results. This sort of thing makes me want to move to Kodi or build something from XBMC source. The cherry on top is, I knocked the dust off my old Plex box and updated everything (because of good practice and casting no longer worked with older versions of PMS and the Plex app) just to find out there are no backwards support for scripts and plugins I worked really hard to create…
TL;DR
Update 12/20/2019 - This is not fully functional yet. I need to refactor a few things and get back to you all. Leave a heart and/or reply if you need this.
Only windows support for now… If people start using it and want more functionality I will consider continuing development.
Assumptions:
- You can successfully get full remote access without using a VPN client on your PMS.
- Connecting the VPN tunnel and restarting PMS breaks that.
- Using split tunnel fixes it, but you run into issues like not being able to get to the settings page of Plex’s web UI.
Prerequisites:
- Forward a port for Plex to use in your firewall and configure the remote settings in Plex to use this port. Each environment is different so google how to do this.
- Use the split tunnel feature of your VPN client to exclude Plex. PIA has this in beta right now.
- Setup a scheduled task to run the below program. Google this for your windows version.
You can use phelper.exe -h to see what options are available or phelper.exe add-remotes -g YOUR_GATEWAY_IP to add static routes to Plex. It requires escalation, so run as system or an admin.
Again, if there are interested parties, I will likely roll this into a service and add features.
phelper.zip (5.3 MB)
