I have recently switched my plex server from an (arm-based) odroid to an x86 box running Ubuntu 18.10. All the problems I describe below are new on the Ubuntu machine. The odroid worked, but was slow and under-powered.
I can create a fresh server and claim it. I have accessed the fresh server from outside my home network. However, at some point, it will become unclaimed (only after a reboot? I’m not sure). After that, I can hit the claim server button all I want, but it never succeeds. I’ve tried shutting down the server then deleting Preferences.xml and restarting, but I’m still unable to claim the server. The only way I can get a claimable server is to delete all of /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library and start over. The cycle then repeats. Plex server is now useless for me. My previous arm-based installation worked for years, so this is very frustrating.
Is your server attached to a router which is behind another modem/router?
PMS can’t find the internet or a real WAN-facing IP.
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:22.847 [0x7fa5f5bf8700] DEBUG - NAT: PMP, attempting mapping.
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:23.097 [0x7fa5f5bf8700] WARN - NAT: PMP, got an error: Not Supported by gateway.
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:23.098 [0x7fa5f5bf8700] DEBUG - NAT: UPnP, attempting port mapping.
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:23.100 [0x7fa5f5bf8700] DEBUG - NAT: UPnP, usable device <http://192.168.1.1:56688/rootDesc.xml> with private address <192.168.1.129>.
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:23.105 [0x7fa5f5bf8700] WARN - NAT: UPnP, error mapping port 10659, error: The port mapping entry specified conflicts with a mapping assigned previously to another client, controlURL: http://192.168.1.1:56688/ctl/IPConn.
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:23.105 [0x7fa5f5bf8700] DEBUG - PublicAddressManager: Mapping failed.
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:25.066 [0x7fa5fb3fd700] DEBUG - HTTP 200 response from GET http://plex.tv/pms/:/ip
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:25.068 [0x7fa5fb3fd700] DEBUG - PublicAddressManager: Got public IP from http://plex.tv: 64.53.188.80
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:26.238 [0x7fa5fb3fd700] DEBUG - NAT: UPnP, found device <http://192.168.1.7:80/description.xml> with private address <192.168.1.129>
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:26.238 [0x7fa5fb3fd700] DEBUG - NAT: UPnP, not an IGD: <http://192.168.1.7:80/description.xml>.
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:26.251 [0x7fa5fb3fd700] DEBUG - NAT: UPnP, found device <http://192.168.1.7:80/description.xml> with private address <192.168.1.129>
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:26.251 [0x7fa5fb3fd700] DEBUG - NAT: UPnP, not an IGD: <http://192.168.1.7:80/description.xml>.
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:26.274 [0x7fa5fb3fd700] DEBUG - NAT: UPnP, found device <http://192.168.1.7:80/description.xml> with private address <192.168.1.129>
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:26.274 [0x7fa5fb3fd700] DEBUG - NAT: UPnP, not an IGD: <http://192.168.1.7:80/description.xml>.
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:26.285 [0x7fa5fb3fd700] DEBUG - NAT: UPnP, found device <http://192.168.1.1:56688/rootDesc.xml> with private address <192.168.1.129>
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:26.288 [0x7fa5fb3fd700] DEBUG - NAT: UPnP, usable device <http://192.168.1.1:56688/rootDesc.xml> with private address <192.168.1.129>.
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:26.290 [0x7fa5fb3fd700] DEBUG - NAT: UPnP, public address is 192.168.0.64
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:26.290 [0x7fa5fb3fd700] DEBUG - PublicAddressManager: got WAN IP 192.168.0.64 from router
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:26.290 [0x7fa5fb3fd700] WARN - PublicAddressManager: WAN IP is a private IP address
Feb 25, 2019 17:15:36.725 [0x7fa5fc3ff700] DEBUG - handleStreamRead code 2: End of file
Yes. Is there a way to work around that? PublicAddressManager finds the right public IP on the "Got public IP from http://plex.tv” line. I have a registered DNS name, if that helps.
do you have a certificate involved? If there is, and that is used for the host, it will not let Plex’s certificate be used to plex.tv. This is a requirement as the claiming and connections between the server and plex.tv is secure.
You need to make PMS aware of your certificate by adding it.
Edit:
The best way to solve it, since it appears both are on same LAN (the WAN IP matches the IP subnet PMS is on), is to put one of them in Bridge mode . This turns off the router function and allows a WiFi portion of the device (if what you’re trying to do) work.
I stacked them as well initially. When I enabled bridge mode, everything worked.
I verified that all the files under /var/lib/plexmediaserver are owned by plex:plex.
I am (was) in a double-NAT situation. Assuming that was the problem, I switched one of the routers to bridged mode. I now see that the ip address displayed in my router is the same as I get from http://whatismyip.host/. For good measure, I removed pms, rebooted, removed the files under /var/lib/plexmediaserver, reinstalled pms, and went through the setup again.
Now I can’t get my server claimed at all. I’m attaching the logs. Notice that I attempted to claim, failed, enabled verbose debugging, and attempted to claim again. All failures.
What I’m seeing are indications of what I can only describe as an either slow internet connection or overloaded processor. I cannot differentiate from the logs. They only are showing me timeout errors.
I see it start obtaining metadata for trailers. Some of them make it down but not all.
This implies to me the download is too slow.
Well, that’s confusing. No, neither conclusion makes any sense. Plex is running on an AMD Athlon™ II X2 215 Processor running Ubuntu. The machine has 4GB of ram. It doesn’t have any significant load other than Plex. It is attached to the Internet via a 100 Mbit wired connection. I don’t have any issues with other devices on the network.
I have the router set up to forward port 32400 to the machine. I don’t know what that would have to do with anything.
The one thing I do see is the SSDP / Double NAT argument going on in the logs.
I find it really odd I should see so much.
I saw where previous UPnP ports were not cleared out of the UPnP map.
Would you take a look at that please in the router and clear out old UPnP entries no longer in use?
Maybe if we quiet one complaint, we can see the root of the other.
I’ve eliminated the double NAT problem by switching one router to bridged nodes. I had port 32400 forwarded manually. There were zero entries in my router’s UPnP table. I turned off the manual port forwarding. I then saw one appropriate entry appear under UPnP.
In the meantime, I turned on my old arm-based machine running Ubuntu 14.04 that I was using for Plex before. I had deleted it from my plex account. When I started plex I was able to claim the server and enable outside access without any trouble.
I also tried installing plex from scratch on a x86 laptop running Ubuntu 18.10 – basically the same hardware and software configuration I started this thread with. It fails in the same way. I cannot claim the server. I see many lines that say
Error issuing curl_easy_perform(handle): 28
in the logs. My arm machine does not have any of those (none, at least, labeled “28”).
My working hypothesis is that Plex is incompatible with Ubuntu 18.10.
