FireTV Can See Unclaimed Server But Won't Use It

Plex Players Streaming Devices
1

Server Version#: 1.21.3.4021
Player Version#: 8.12.4.22902

After a house move, the FireTV player can see that the server exists, but won’t do anything with it. If I go to “More +”, the server is listed but with an exclamation point in a triangle next to it (with zero other information). Highlighting it and pressing the OK button on the remote just closes the side panel without doing anything. I know the FireTV can see the server because I changed the “friendly name” of the server and the FireTV showed the updated name.

I don’t sign in and don’t want to have a Plex account, so I have an unclaimed server. I don’t enable remote access, I just use it within the LAN. This has been working fine. Server is on a Linux box and the player is on a FireTV stick.

We recently moved house which sadly also meant a WiFi LAN change (it shouldn’t have, but it did) using a different subnet. Other than that nothing changed. Powered off the machines at one end, powered them on at the other, updated their network settings, and … Plex won’t work on the FireTV. It will work from an iPad, just not from the FireTV.

Other things I’ve tried:

  1. Uninstalled Plex on the FireTV entirely and reinstalled (including “Clear Data” and “Clear Cache”)
  2. Made sure the server was up to date (it wasn’t, but it is now)
  3. Enabled DLNA discovery (it was previously turned off) - no difference
  4. Disabled IPv6 (it was previously on) - no difference
  5. Filled in the “List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth” list with 192.168.XXX.0/255.255.255.0 (where XXX is my actual octet for this LAN). It was previously empty. No difference.
  6. Moved all the old logs out of Plex Media Server/Logs, “Force stop”'d the app on the FireTV, then ran the app and tried to go to the server. No new logs were written.
  7. Rebooted the machine the server is on. That wrote new logs. Waited until they seemed to stop doing anything, then tried to connect from the FireTV. New information was logged, seemed to stop after three minutes:
Feb 13, 2021 11:58:20.637 [0x7fc8d0ff9700] DEBUG - NetworkServiceBrowser: PLAYER arrived: 192.168.XXX.104
Feb 13, 2021 11:58:23.696 [0x7fc8bd7fa700] DEBUG - Request: [192.168.XXX.104:42030 (Allowed Network (Subnet))] GET /media/providers?includePreferences=1 (2 live) GZIP
Feb 13, 2021 11:58:23.716 [0x7fc8d8c0a700] DEBUG - Completed: [192.168.XXX.104:42030] 200 GET /media/providers?includePreferences=1 (2 live) GZIP 20ms 3777 bytes (pipelined: 1)
Feb 13, 2021 11:58:24.718 [0x7fc8bd7fa700] DEBUG - Request: [192.168.XXX.104:42034 (Allowed Network (Subnet))] GET /:/websockets/notifications (3 live) GZIP Token ()
Feb 13, 2021 11:58:24.719 [0x7fc8bd7fa700] DEBUG - WebSocket: Performing handshake from origin 
Feb 13, 2021 11:58:24.719 [0x7fc8bd7fa700] DEBUG - Beginning read from WebSocket
Feb 13, 2021 11:58:25.021 [0x7fc8bd7fa700] DEBUG - Request: [192.168.XXX.104:42036 (Allowed Network (Subnet))] GET /:/websockets/notifications (4 live) GZIP
Feb 13, 2021 11:58:25.021 [0x7fc8bd7fa700] DEBUG - WebSocket: Performing handshake from origin 
Feb 13, 2021 11:58:25.021 [0x7fc8bd7fa700] DEBUG - Beginning read from WebSocket
Feb 13, 2021 11:59:03.747 [0x7fc890ff9700] DEBUG - BPQ: [Starting] -> [Processing]
Feb 13, 2021 11:59:03.753 [0x7fc890ff9700] DEBUG - BPQ: generating queue items from 0 generator(s)
Feb 13, 2021 11:59:03.753 [0x7fc890ff9700] DEBUG - BPQ: generated 0 item(s) for queue
Feb 13, 2021 11:59:03.754 [0x7fc890ff9700] DEBUG - PlayQueue: 0 generated IDs compressed down to a 20 byte blob.
Feb 13, 2021 11:59:03.754 [0x7fc890ff9700] DEBUG - PlayQueue: 0 generated IDs compressed down to a 20 byte blob.
Feb 13, 2021 11:59:03.754 [0x7fc890ff9700] DEBUG - BPQ: [Processing] -> [Idle]
Feb 13, 2021 11:59:04.884 [0x7fc8bd7fa700] DEBUG - Request: [127.0.0.1:54710 (Loopback)] GET /servers (4 live) GZIP
Feb 13, 2021 11:59:04.885 [0x7fc8d8c0a700] DEBUG - Completed: [127.0.0.1:54710] 200 GET /servers (4 live) GZIP 0ms 496 bytes
Feb 13, 2021 11:59:04.889 [0x7fc8bd7fa700] DEBUG - Request: [127.0.0.1:54712 (Loopback)] GET /library/sections (4 live) GZIP
Feb 13, 2021 11:59:04.890 [0x7fc8d8c0a700] DEBUG - Completed: [127.0.0.1:54712] 200 GET /library/sections (4 live) GZIP 1ms 1032 bytes
Feb 13, 2021 11:59:04.894 [0x7fc8bd7fa700] DEBUG - Request: [127.0.0.1:54714 (Loopback)] GET /channels/all (4 live) GZIP
Feb 13, 2021 11:59:04.894 [0x7fc8d3fff700] DEBUG - Completed: [127.0.0.1:54714] 200 GET /channels/all (4 live) GZIP 0ms 387 bytes
Feb 13, 2021 12:00:04.280 [0x7fc8727fc700] DEBUG - Statistics: Flushing 2 expired bandwidth entries, 0 expired media entries.
Feb 13, 2021 12:02:04.005 [0x7fc8bffff700] DEBUG - NetworkInterface: received Netlink message len=64, type=RTM_NEWLINK, flags=0x0
Feb 13, 2021 12:02:04.005 [0x7fc8bffff700] DEBUG - NetworkInterface: Netlink information message family=0, type=1, index=2, flags=0x11043, change=0x0
Feb 13, 2021 12:02:04.005 [0x7fc8bffff700] DEBUG - Network change.
Feb 13, 2021 12:02:04.005 [0x7fc8bffff700] DEBUG - NetworkInterface: Notified of network changed (force=0)
Feb 13, 2021 12:02:04.005 [0x7fc8bffff700] DEBUG - Network change notification but nothing changed.

Does anyone have any idea how to fix this?

Thanks in advance,

– Steve

2

I thought this setting used CIDR notation. Try “192.168.xxx.0/24”. Also, do you have “Enable local network discovery (GDM)” checked?

1 Like
3

Thanks for looking at this!

Yes, I have network discovery enabled.

I think it accepts subnets in either format (I can see “Request: [192.168.XXX.104:42030 (Allowed Network (Subnet))]” in the previous logs), but I changed it anyway. I don’t think think it changed anything, but maybe? Because:

I noticed some lines that seem diagnostic in the log this time that I either missed last time or were enabled by the change. Here they are (where you see ^@ below it’s actually the literal character with the value zero, which I couldn’t paste here; I used ^@ because that’s how vim shows them):

Feb 14, 2021 09:37:51.273 [0x7f0b6affd700] DEBUG - NetworkServiceBrowser: Parsing SSDP schema for http://192.168.XXX.104:9080
Feb 14, 2021 09:37:51.273 [0x7f0b6affd700] DEBUG - HTTP requesting GET http://192.168.XXX.104:9080
Feb 14, 2021 09:37:51.340 [0x7f0b6affd700] DEBUG - HTTP 200 response from GET http://192.168.XXX.104:9080
Feb 14, 2021 09:37:51.340 [0x7f0b6affd700] ERROR - XML: Entity: line 1:^@
Feb 14, 2021 09:37:51.340 [0x7f0b6affd700] ERROR - XML: parser^@
Feb 14, 2021 09:37:51.340 [0x7f0b6affd700] ERROR - XML: error :^@
Feb 14, 2021 09:37:51.340 [0x7f0b6affd700] ERROR - XML: Start tag expected, '<' not found^@
Feb 14, 2021 09:37:51.340 [0x7f0b6affd700] ERROR - XML: status=ok^@
Feb 14, 2021 09:37:51.340 [0x7f0b6affd700] ERROR - XML: ^^@
Feb 14, 2021 09:37:51.340 [0x7f0b6affd700] ERROR - Error parsing content.
Feb 14, 2021 09:37:51.340 [0x7f0b6affd700] ERROR - Error parsing XML: Error parsing file.
Feb 14, 2021 09:37:51.340 [0x7f0b6affd700] ERROR - SSDP: Error parsing device schema for http://192.168.XXX.104:9080
Feb 14, 2021 09:38:02.750 [0x7f0b457fa700] DEBUG - Request: [192.168.XXX.104:45066 (Allowed Network (Subnet))] GET /:/websockets/notifications (3 live) GZIP Token ()
Feb 14, 2021 09:38:02.754 [0x7f0b457fa700] DEBUG - WebSocket: Performing handshake from origin 
Feb 14, 2021 09:38:02.754 [0x7f0b457fa700] DEBUG - Beginning read from WebSocket
Feb 14, 2021 09:38:17.363 [0x7f0b7adcc700] DEBUG - WebSocket: client initiated close
Feb 14, 2021 09:38:17.363 [0x7f0b7adcc700] DEBUG - NotificationStream: Removing because of close
Feb 14, 2021 09:38:17.363 [0x7f0b7a5cb700] DEBUG - handleStreamRead code 2: End of file
Feb 14, 2021 09:38:17.363 [0x7f0b7a5cb700] DEBUG - Completed after connection close: [192.168.XXX.104:45066] -3 GET /:/websockets/notifications (3 live) GZIP 14614ms 7 bytes

This then repeats at roughly 30s intervals for a while.

http://192.168.XXX.104 is the FireTV. When I send a GET to that URL, I get back this response body:

status=ok

with these headers:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2021 10:24:46 GMT
Server: NRDP/2020.2.0.1
Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: no-cache
Content-Length: 9

So we definitely have two-way communication, but Plex seems to expect XML in response to that query rather than plain text…

Thanks,

– Steve

4

Since the server and Fire Stick are both on a network connected to the Internet, they might be defaulting to talking to each other with the help of Plex’s severs. Have you tried entering the server’s IP into the manual connection settings on the Fire Stick?

One time I got the “triangles on the side” and it was caused by an update (can’t remember if it was on the client or the server side). Doing a reset of the home screen customization fixed it as I think the client was looking for libraries that did not really exist anymore (no such library of name x on server named y). Readding the servers to the home screen after the reset fixed that.

Edit: Actually, I’m not finding the manual connection option on the settings now – did that get removed at some point? I’m on client 8.11 right now.

1 Like
5

You are a genius! “Reset all customizations” did the trick. What the…

Yeah, I don’t think they have the “add manually” option anymore.

Thanks again!!

– Steve

6

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