As I’ve said , which I’ll say again, everyone needs to remember how a web server works.
Paint a display
Collect all the input on that display
Send and process as a BATCH TRANSACTION when the button is pressed.
Let me ask: Are you using Plex Home (to manage users)?
If so: You are mandating Cloud Authentication before even seeing the local server.
What I am suggesting bypasses Plex Home and all Cloud Auth.
There is a second component needed here for the full solution but can be phased in: That solution is Local Authentication and management of user accounts
Every day opening Plexweb becomes more and more a chore.
It’s like:
I’m in bed with Plex, but I have to call it on the phone to get it to take a breath mint.
But what about my second issue highlighted by me a couple of times in the thread? As the API server was also down (thread title) it was impossible to add new media to the library.
Your contention: “Why is your server required to add content to my server?”
Correct?
Look at what I’ve proposed.
I just bypassed Plex.tv in that “Enter Server Address”.
For this to work fully, you need get rid of the self-imposed mandate on Plex Home.
Delete the home and you are free of Cloud services.
Keep it on and then you MUST access the cloud service before you are allowed access to yours.
Do I think they could have written it differently? Yes.
IMHO, and what we’ve wanted for a LOOOOOOONG time.
Local authentication.
True, local user / asset management.
Since those still don’t exist, I’m not holding my breath. Instead.
I’m going to trim my server down to:
Serve my media in my home
If cloud services are available, let friends use “Shared” libraries
Anyone else I’ve not made my own arrangements to grant access at the internet level is just S.O.L.
Is this “fair” to everyone? No.
If it’s my family, I’ll take care of them.
I have a unique perspective: If someone is going to run a server then that someone better know what it means to truly “run the server” . Clicking a few buttons then whining that it’s broken when the cloud authentication fails doesn’t cut it with me.
Should have looked at the logs earlier. Turns out the problem was plex.tv wasn’t resolving on my network. Didn’t realize it 'cause my browser had the DNS cached.
But what if I want online metadata for my movies and series, but not my music (as I’ve tagged it properly). Imho, In the case of a Plex server blackout it should still be possible to add media, but just skip the online resources untill everything is back online.
Online metadata comes from TMDB and TVDB. There is no need to pull from plex.tv to obtain that data.
Do I disagree with how Music is implemented? Yes.
Is there another way? Yes.
Nobody liked “Basic Music” libraries but it worked.
Engineering gave folks what they wanted. Deal with it.
Ever since yesterday, my contact cannot connect via “enable remote access”. I’ve been using a Netgear Nitehawk R900 for years and have never had a problem. Now for whatever reason it just won’t connect. I haven’t changed any of the settings or anything. Any help would be great.
Problem I am still just getting the Plex logo as shown above…
Any attempt to access that server by IP gets redirected… https://app.plex.tv/auth/#!?clientID=suohpg
Tried it from a number of browsers, private windows, from the server it’s self…
I don’t really think they gave people what they wanted. They gave people what they thought people wanted. As far as I can tell, they never asked for input in the forums during development or anything like it. If the users had been involved during development I think the music library could’ve avoided some of the bigger flaws of the current design.
With that said, I do like getting artist bios and such things, I just don’t want it to ■■■■ up my tags, and I want them read properly. It’s not all bad though. I think it works for 80% of my needs and wants, but every now and then something pops up where I’m just thinking why on earth is it made this way.
But to get back on topic at the end: At the end of the day, it matters less to me what is done to fix the current issues with authentication and the API server, as long as something is done about it. There’s many ways to fix this. I do like your suggestion.
That’s why | suggested to add this offline PMS auth thing as a on/off function which could leads to a huge security loophole for many users. Best thing to do is, if somebody turns on that offline PMS feature it should only allow to authenticate (from local PMS) home/local users and Plex should automatically disable REMOTE ACCESS feature completely not even allow to turn on it manually. The whole feature settings should grayed out.
FWIW, just read over the postmortem report for the outage. Root cause was essentially way higher than normal traffic (lots of people at home watching) coupled with a missing index on a database.
We have a number of things we’ll be doing to avoid this happening again, and I apologize for the downtime!
