What I proposed isn’t the “One size fits all”.
You’ve got the exception.
From where I sit, your solution is far more work…
I will not discuss the merits of either solution further. This would be off-topic.
Separate thread?
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I see you moved my reboot post, but I can’t find where it was moved to-
Alan,
I didn’t remove your post. I thought you did. I removed my reply to your reply as it was moot by itself.
FYI All: Operations reporting normal status.
PS: Alan, I can still see your post and it indicates that you deleted it. i have a screenshot if you wish to retrieve the text.
Please, as I did not delete it intentionally. I was looking for how to split it off into a different thread, I amnot finding that.
Sent via PM.
While I appreciate your willingness to discuss, does it really make a difference either way?
I don’t want to waste any more of your time or mine on this. What I saw today from @elan was enough to tell me that this is going to continue in this way and nothing you or I say or come up with is going to change that.
I am testing both emby and jellyfin as we speak. I just finished installing both on my server and while, at first glance, I don’t like either as much as I like plex’s interface, I prefer function over fashion any day of the week.
This is the third strike for me and it just happen to be the worst solely because of the way elan acted in this very thread.
I appreciate you chuck and while those other apps may only be used as a backup for a short time, I think that after being a supporter and user for almost longer than my youngest daughter has been alive, I will be moving on.
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Best of luck in your search.
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I like Plex online authentication before giving accessing to any PMS server. Security vice it’s a must feature.
If PLEX want to get rid off this online auth requirement, please add it as a on/off feature and if anybody turn that feature on then disable the remote access functionality.
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Don’t want to derail the thread any more and was just going to send you a PM @ChuckPa but doesn’t appear to be an option to do so.
It looks like Emby does just what you said, and you give the apps the local IP to connect…will run in sidestep with Plex for a while before I make the switch and do some testing later after the family goes to bed, cutting off the outside world and see what happens.
FYI, tested with my cell, disabling mobile data and only working on wifi (ie internal network) and Emby still functioned fine as if there was no issue. Just the way things should be.
Don’t worry, I won’t continue to post about a competitors offering here but may be something that Plex might want to look into…
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So how do you access your server then when you have no access to the outside world without a fallback authentication method available?
With the recent virus outbreak, what happens if all governments decide that all bandwidth needs to be reserved for essential communications and tasks leaving you unable to connect to the plex authentication api? They have already shut down gathering in public, forced events to shutdown, bars and theatres to close. Have closed borders. How long do you think that bandwidth is deemed an emergency resource to be used only for business applications?
It’s not a tinfoil hat conspiracy–it’s a very real possibility. If Plex doesn’t change or you don’t change over to something else other than plex, you may not even have access to that.
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The difference is emby leaves securing your server and authentication completely up to you, you even have to prepare your own SSL certificates if I am not mistaken. You simply directly connect to your server, just how you want it.
While this is something that can be done, it is not something the average Joe can do, I believe. In this regard, Plex is much easier to use because it makes all the work for you.
But why not just set up Emby/Jelly as a local backup solution on you server? Whenever Plex has issues (which is not often the case), switch to that and continue watching. That is how I am doing.
@ChuckPa. Good morning. 
So back to my issue with all of this. I have Secure connections sett to required. I do have my own certificate and a domain that I use for direct outside connections. I didn’t check if I was able to connect from the internet, but i was able to access my server locally without issue. I think this is fine and working as intended.
What I don’t understand is why the local Plex server is made in such a way that I am not able to add new media while the Plex API server is down. Why is the Plex service set up in such a way that the streaming service can essentially kill access to the local server and non-streaming related features like library management? Why isn’t these things split up and independent of each-other?
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Thank you very much for the in depth explanation! I think I understand those settings a good bit better now. Unfortunately they were already set as you recommended, though, so I don’t think that was the cause of my issue in this case.
Hi @ChuckPa, I started another thread here, when you have a chance to look at it:
IMHO, to which I am possibly completely wrong, Plex/web is the root of the evil here;
- I t is the only means by which we can administer the server
- It mandates Plex.tv
This is what I’m trying to champion first and foremost.
It is my belief, with this singular change:
- Use Plex (and Plex.tv) normally
- Ignore Plex.tv when issues arise
a. Outages
b. Need to reclaim my server because I messed it up
c. I am making other changes and know precisely what I’m doing.
To give an example, let me share what I’m taking about. This includes all the hosts I currently have defined for my normal work and one example of how I believe it could look.
<PINNED
- DEBIAN9-INIT
- DEBIAN9-SYSTEMD
- DS418
- MOESERN
- SHIELD
- UBUNTU19
- WIEN
- Enter Server Address
“Enter Server Address”
- I click it
- A popup opens
- I enter the IP address of the server I wish to connect to (and stay connected to) regardless of anything else happening. This tells Plex/Web (the app) to ignore Plex.tv and trust what I’m telling it. (I know more than plex.tv does at this moment).
- Plex/Web opens the server and stays ‘bound’ to this manually chosen server until such time as I cursor and select another in the left pane.
This will work for the desktop app and devices which have OSD keyboards.
Does this better convey what I’ve been describing?
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Despite plexstatus showing everything as being up I am still unable to access any of my servers.
Whether connecting directly to the server or via app.plex.tv I only have the option to put in the PIN for my account. None of my managed users show up. Once I put in my PIN, I get the message that Plex is unavailable.
Restart the server & then restart apps after server restarts
I think it’s a good fallback option.
But I still thinks it’s bad engineering to let the content delivery service (streaming) being able to negatively affect the authentication service in the first place, considering how crucial it is for normal Plex usage. Not everyone have the techical know-how to do complicated setups, and I think the current way of doing it is supposed to alleviate that? The problem arises when other parts of Plex are able to basically kill access to the authentication service. What happens then is like in the case of yesterday, people who watched streamed content locked everyone out of Plex. It shouldn’t be possible.
My second issue is with how a lack of internet access (or specifically access to the API server) locks me out of adding new local media to my library. What is the reasoning for this choice of design?
I’m using the web. Still seeing the same problem.
Using Plex on QNAP NAS, still no connection possilbe although I restarted Plex several times.
Please fix ASAP
THX
