Error: Plex had a failure Exception

[jmunoz96]

I have ZERO experience with any of this networking stuff so apologies in advance if I don’t understand you or if I don’t make any sense.

When installing the plex plugin by selecting DHCP on truenas I get the following
Error: Plex had a failure Exception: RuntimeError Message: + Acquiring DHCP address: FAILED, address received: ERROR, check jail logs Stopped Plex due to DHCP failure Partial plugin destroyed

Forums recommended making a static IP, I believe I did it right. From there I was told that clicking NAT instead of DHCP would help & nope. It says successful but when I click manage so that it can take me to the plex web I get, " This site can’t be reached". I also read somewhere to try to ping to server or to write out a script but I have NO CLUE what any of that means.

I even went ahead and wiped out my drives, reinstalled truenas, NOTHING works.
If any of the following helps:
Netgear router/modem with 2 ports. 1 ethernet connected to Netgear ethernet switch. The switch has ethernet to server, my pc, brother’s pc.

[nx6]

Choosing “NAT” adds a layer of NAT on the jail, so the network connection is no longer direct on your network – you don’t want that. You want VNET on, so the jail operates it’s own networking independent of the TrueNAS system.

“Berkeley Packet Filter” can be on or off, I guess having it on adds some protection from outside intrusion or something (?). I dunno. I left it off for years and had no issues, but it’s on now for me.

vnet_default_interface can be “any”.
ipv4 Interface: set to the vnet option you’ll see there.

Fully fill out the IP information. The static IP address you picked (something outside the DHCP range of your router), IPv4 Netmask (24 for most people), and your network’s default gateway IP for “IPv4 Default Router”. Also turn on “Allow Raw Sockets” on the network Properties section when you get to it.

[jmunoz96]

Thanks for the reply.
I filled out the information as best as I could but I still get an error as shown in the picture.

[nx6]

Don’t bother with the plug-in. They aren’t really supported.
I recommend just doing this manually.

Open the shell on the TrueNAS system and set up a plain jail install from there.

echo '{"pkgs":["plexmediaserver","ca_root_nss","nano"]}' > /tmp/pkg.json

This makes a temporary list of packages to get.

iocage create -n "plex" -p /tmp/pkg.json -r 13.1-RELEASE ip4_addr="vnet0|LOCALIP/24" defaultrouter="DEFAULTGW" vnet="on" allow_raw_sockets="1" boot="on"

This creates the actual jail and runs installation of the packages we listed in the last step. Substitute the static IP you want to use for LOCALIP and your normal default gateway for DEFAULTGW. The jail will be named “plex” here unless you want to change that.

rm /tmp/pkg.json

We’ve installed stuff now, so we don’t need that list anymore.

iocage exec plex sysrc "plexmediaserver_enable=YES"

Setting the new jail to run Plex automatically when it starts here. The first “plex” on these commands is referring to the jail by name, so if you decided to name it something else you’ll need to use that name instead.

iocage exec plex service plexmediaserver start

Starting the Plex Media Server now…
You can exit out of the shell now.

Now, wait 30 seconds or so, and then go try accessing the server at http://LOCALIP:32400/web/index.html

You should get the initial setup screens. You can go ahead and sign in with your Plex account and stuff but we aren’t done yet. Just making sure the server boots up and can be claimed mostly,

Go ahead and close that out for now.
Now open the shell in the jail you created. (Go to the FreeNAS Jails section, expand down the jail you made there, hit Shell there.

mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos

Making a folder here that does not exist on the jail right now.

nano /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf

Making a new text file with the Nano text editor called “FreeBSD.conf” in that folder we just made.
The jail you just made installed Plex from an older set of packages that are only updated once every three months, so the version of Plex you have now is not current. We need to change the jail to use the LATEST updates on packages.

Here is what you paste in that text file:

FreeBSD: {
    url: "pkg+http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/latest"
}

Ctrl-x to exit out of Nano, and tell it to save changes.

service plexmediaserver stop

Stopping Plex Media Server to upgrade it.

pkg update

Updating the current listings of things since we just changed that info on the repository to use.

pkg upgrade

Upgrade current packages. It will probably find newer versions of Plex and Nano at least.

service plexmediaserver start

Once all the updates are installed we can start Plex up again.

This is just the initial setup. You will still need to set up mount points to locations outside the jail to where you media files are, just like if the Plugin had installed properly.

To update Plex in the future you would just go into the jail and:

1. Stop the server, like we just did.
2. pkg update
3. pkg upgrade
4. Start the server again.

I recommend making a snapshot of the “root” portion of the jail just before you do an update to Plex, in case you have to rewind and roll back in case of a problem (see normal FreeNAS forum for help on that).

[ref]