Server Version#: 1.32.6.7557
I share some or all of the libraries on my Plex server running on Windows 10 with a dozen or so friends. A few months ago, all but two of my friends lost access to my libraries. They still appear on my “Friends” page but they no longer appear on my “Manage Library Access” page. I re-granted the rest of my friends access to the libraries I want to share, but the issue has been repeating itself at least twice. A friend will ask why my Plex server is down, I’ll load up my “Manage Library Access” page, and it will be back down to the same two friends who have been “persistent,” and everyone else has lost access. It seems related to the server crashing occasionally, but I’d imagine these library access settings would be stored in the cloud and shouldn’t be lost with a server crash. It’s also a lot of work to re-share my specific libraries with 10+ people every few weeks. Any guidance?
I’m not using any 3rd-party tools to do inviting or sharing. The only 3rd party thing I’ve had was Tautulli but that’s been uninstalled for a few years now.
I’ve been getting to the pages by the Plex icon in my taskbar which brings me to it via locahost IP (127.0.0.1). I’ll be sure to go through https://app.plex.tv from now on, but I just checked that link and the Friends and Manage Library Access pages look the exact same. They are correctly configured for now. I will be sure to check (and re-configure all my sharing settings) from app.plex.tv if this happens again.
I have been unable to resolve the issue. I was able to isolate some crash events and found some errors around scanning some very old files which I removed. This seemed to help the frequency of crash events, and therefore the frequency at which my sharing settings were lost.
However, the app still crashes occasionally and I’ve found my sharing settings lost. I witnessed a crash over the weekend while rewinding or seeking using a Roku TV client, and after all my sharing settings were lost.
I found another thread of someone experiencing a similar issue, Friends losing all library access 1-2 times per day
I found this enlightening and do see that my server appears to have been added hours ago when I look at https://app.plex.tv/desktop/#!/settings/devices/pms, despite using the same server setup for many years. My suspicion is that whenever it crashes, something goes wrong and it registers it as a new Plex server instance, possibly related to the Windows Registry.
This still doesn’t explain why two of my friends never lose their sharing settings, always the same two friends, while the other handful always lose it when this happens.
This issue has still been reoccurring. I’ve been staying on the most recent public channel version of PMS. I just updated to 1.40.0.7998 and set up all the sharing settings again, we will see how that goes but I’m not optimistic as I’ve updated to the latest version many times but it does not resolve the issue.
I’ve resolved the issues with frequent crashes; I get them quite infrequently now, if at all, yet it this issue persists. I also ran integrity checks on the windows registry and repaired errors but that also did not resolve this issue.
I noticed one thing today, though. The two users who never lose access have “All Libraries” shared with them. All other users have a subset of selected libraries, primarily to selectively sharing my 4k libraries to prevent bandwidth and/or transcoding overuse. I can’t believe I didn’t realize this sooner. I am very suspicious that something like the following is happening: when I share specific libraries with friends, it associates a library ID or Guid with the friend to share with them, but something is happening to generate a new ID or Guid for those libraries whenever PMS or the machine restarts. So they lose access, but the friends who have “All Libraries” don’t have any specific IDs or Guids associated, they just get everything I have, so they maintain access even if all my libraries erroneously got new IDs or Guids.
