Managed Users & Friends not working after Mac > Synology migration

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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1

I’m about to tear my hair out. It’s been a week of trying to migrate/clone the PMS I’ve run on a Mac for 4+ years now to a DS418 and there’s been nothing but trouble.

I’ve followed these instructions to the letter and have had nothing but headaches; even sourcing some filler commands through the comments section. I’ve had to redo it several times to get the DS418 to even remotely resemble PMS when it was running on the Mac.

My watch history is still a mess.
Refresh all Metadata completely destroyed the sort titling and poster art I had customized.
Playlists have seemed to dropped titles from them inconsistently.
Now all my Managed Users and Friends cannot see the library that I verified is shared with them.

Can anyone help me figure out what’s going on here?

Server Version#: 1.21.3.4046
Media files are not stored in the Library folder on the DS418
Preferences files have been modified with the Machine IDs as asked.
I’m able to see the server from the Primary/Admin profile both locally and remote.

2

Can you please go download the DEBUG logs ZIP file from PMS
and attach it here?

An optimum set would be:

  1. Verify DEBUG logging enabled; VERBOSE disabled; SAVE if changed
  2. Restart PMS
  3. Let sartup for 2 minutes.
  4. Recreate problem.
  5. Download the logs ZIP
  6. Attach it for me to review

If need be, I will look at what Plex.tv has. If I see duplication there then we can fix it.

5

Sorry for multiple replies. Appreciate you following up.

Plex Media Server Logs_2021-02-24_21-11-59.zip (2.1 MB)

6

Thanks for providing those logs.

Are you using a NGINX or other Proxy?

Your logs indicate something along those lines.

Whatever is happening, it appears to also be impacting Plex’s abilitty to connect properly with Plex.tv.

It’s resulting in “Forbidden” replies.

Feb 24, 2021 20:59:13.999 [0x7f8d69d1a0] DEBUG - EventSource: Connected in 73 ms.
Feb 24, 2021 20:59:14.000 [0x7f8d69d1a0] DEBUG - EventSource: Wrote data, reading reply.
Feb 24, 2021 20:59:14.047 [0x7f8d69d1a0] DEBUG - Completed: [10.0.0.114:64223] 200 GET /player/proxy/poll?deviceClass=pc&protocolVersion=3&protocolCapabilities=timeline%2Cplayback%2Cnavigation%2Cmirror%2Cplayqueues&timeout=1 (8 live) TLS GZIP 20001ms 5 bytes (pipelined: 6)
Feb 24, 2021 20:59:14.413 [0x7f8d98b1a0] DEBUG - EventSource: Read HTTP reply header.
Feb 24, 2021 20:59:14.413 [0x7f8d98b1a0] DEBUG - EventSource: Failure in ParseHeader: HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
Server: nginx
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2021 01:59:14 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 162
Connection: close

<html>
<head><title>403 Forbidden</title></head>
<body bgcolor="white">
<center><h1>403 Forbidden</h1></center>
<hr><center>nginx</center>
</body>
</html>
 (0 - Success).
Feb 24, 2021 20:59:14.477 [0x7f8d98b1a0] DEBUG - EventSource: Stopping.
Feb 24, 2021 20:59:14.477 [0x7f8d98b1a0] DEBUG - PubsubServerManager: Switching to next host in region: 45.56.116.228
Feb 24, 2021 20:59:14.480 [0x7f8d98b1a0] DEBUG - EventSource: Stopping.
Feb 24, 2021 20:59:14.480 [0x7f8d98b1a0] DEBUG - EventSource: Resolving 45.56.116.228 port 443
Feb 24, 2021 20:59:14.480 [0x7f8d98b1a0] DEBUG - EventSource: Resolved 45.56.116.228 to 45.56.116.228
Feb 24, 2021 20:59:14.540 [0x7f8d69d1a0] DEBUG - EventSource: Connected in 41 ms.
Feb 24, 2021 20:59:14.540 [0x7f8d69d1a0] DEBUG - EventSource: Wrote data, reading reply.
Feb 24, 2021 20:59:14.964 [0x7f8d98b1a0] DEBUG - EventSource: Read HTTP reply header.
Feb 24, 2021 20:59:14.964 [0x7f8d98b1a0] DEBUG - EventSource: Failure in ParseHeader: HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
Server: nginx
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2021 01:59:14 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 162
Connection: close

<html>
<head><title>403 Forbidden</title></head>
<body bgcolor="white">
<center><h1>403 Forbidden</h1></center>
<hr><center>nginx</center>
</body>
</html>
 (0 - Success).
Feb 24, 2021 20:59:14.964 [0x7f8d98b1a0] ERROR - EventSource: Retrying in 15 seconds.
Feb 24, 2021 20:59:26.011 [0x7f8d69d1a0] DEBUG - Completed: [10.0.0.114:64278] 200 GET /player/proxy/poll?deviceClass=pc&protocolVersion=3&protocolCapabilities=timeline%2Cplayback%2Cnavigation%2Cmirror%2Cplayqueues&timeout=1 (7 live) TLS GZIP 20001ms 5 bytes (pipelined: 3)

I did look at your account.
Over the past several days, I can see where you’ve had a heck of a time migrating.
While looking at your account, I took the liberty of completely removing those servers which you’d already deleted / superseded. They won’t bother you anymore.

Before you reply to my question, would you mind restarting PMS and seeing if those other dead server entries were having any impact?

7

Awesome, that seems to have kicked it back into gear. Managed Users and Friends are working again after a restart.

In terms of Mac and the DS418, I haven’t tinkered to deeply with any network settings that I know of since taking either out of the box. Wish I knew what gummed up the works here.

Any ideas on how to fix the other problems, or am I just SOL since hitting the Refresh All Metadata? FWIW, I still have the backup tar and 2/16-17 Mac directory as-is.

8

If you can do the following:

  1. Stop Plex
  2. Copy “Preferences.xml” to a safe area
  3. Now deposit all the other metadata over what exists.
  4. In FileStation, for change owner to user plex and verify the permissions all again for user Plex
  5. Copy & Overwrite the Prefences.xml which was copied in.

This keeps all the ID numbers correct.

At some point, with the agent changing, if you 've not upgraded it – you will need to. The legacy agent won’t be sustained forever.

Make sure the file naming is perfect so a refresh doesn’t mess with it.
If you have custom posters – put them in with the media (named properly) so PMS picks it up.

If you curate all that then it will easily survive even a full rebuild.

9

That didn’t seem to change much, if anything at all.

10

I went looking deeper into your account (as far as I am permitted).

I can see you have shared users (with their own account) and you have managed users (which exist solely within your PMS system).

Which users are missing and, objectively, how difficult would it be to add those few (?) ?

(( which is quicker: Fussing with copying them or just recreating them after the migration ? ))

11

Sorry, meant these specifically:
My watch history is still a mess.
Refresh all Metadata completely destroyed the sort titling and poster art I had customized.
Playlists have seemed to dropped titles from them inconsistently.

I’d say the Managed Users and Friends issue is resolved.

12

Taking metadata ( the contents of Plex Media Server/Media and Plex Media Server/Metadata and all below it ) is a very basic operation.

When it doesn’t work, only a few things could have gone wrong:

  1. Transfer wasn’t complete
  2. Ownership of the files is not plex:users (translated to the new UID/GID on the Linux host)

Might you have missed the chown -R plex:users . ?

It sounds like you got a partial someway / somehow.

13

I did every step from [Migrating Plex from Mac to your Synology NAS](https://this link here.) So I believe it’s a complete directory backup.

Comments section said something about adjusting that to [sudo chown -R plex:users . ]
I’m sure during the many re-do I’ve done it with and without the sudo.

14

there is one 100% safe thing you can always do on DSM 6 .

cd /volume*/Plex/Library
sudo chown -R plex:users .

this is everything about the metadata, including the database which contains the watch status.

I’m trying to think what could have happend to cause this skew.

One critical point in the process is:

  1. Start Plex (with all the automatic library functions disabled)
  2. For each library section:
    a. Edit the library section
    b. Add the new shared folder path - do not yet remove the existing folder path
    c. save the changes
    d. Scan files for that section if it doesn’t start automatically (it should)
    e. Observe as each existing poster has a 2 attached (signifying a duplicate). This lets you know PMS has found the file in its new location and paired it with the existing match.
    f. If a poster doesn’t have a “2” – there is an issue to find out.
    g. After scanning is complete; different NAS’s will continue a bit after the scanner stops spinning – this is normal . Verification of the “2” on all posters confirms it’s done
    h. Edit the section again - Remove the old path.
    i. Save the changes
    j. Observe one final pass as it removes the “2” from each poster.
    k. Move to the next section
  3. With all sections file locations updated
  4. Scan files one last time
  5. Empty Trash
  6. Clean Bundles
  7. Optimize Database
  8. Enable automatic & partial setting in “Settings - Server - Library” as they were before.

If this gets out of sync or not done correctly, watch history will be lost and posters previously associated will be lost because the media will be matched again as if new

15

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