New server install will not complete setup after wiping previous install

Plex Media Server
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PMS for Mac – Version Matrix

Mac Version Downloads for Last Known Working Versions Status as of 20 Nov 2022
≤ 10.14.6 1.28.2.6151 1.29.0.6244 Use Safari (⌘⇧N) Private Window and clear all history. If you upgrade beyond this version, you get Settings are unavailable.[1] If you fresh install beyond this, Setup will fail at the Friendly Name step.[2]
≥ 11.0.0 current Use Safari ( ⌘⇧N) Private Window and clear all history. At version 1.29.2 Plex increased security on MacOS with mandatory claiming during Setup where you’re required to authenticate online.[3]

more words?

Yes a blocking level issue still exists only on older MacOS as shown above. I learned of a new claiming tool called Setup.html included with PMS for Mac, but that’s more for headless. And these issues are not a failure to claim or reclaim. It’s more as described above :slight_smile:

Is claiming easy on Mac? Not reeally, no. That’s why I mention the most important history and private window aspects. I wrote up How to Sign Out PMS For Mac, Downgrade & Reclaim somewhere, too.

  1. A longer topic is here: ↩︎

  2. PMS returns HTTP Error 500 when asked for /:/prefs? ↩︎

  3. mostly mandatory according to the topic on the forum. ↩︎

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Tried letting the Plex Server install an update today, and issues have returned. (MacOS 10.14 Mojave.)

“Server settings are unavailable.” So I can’t even check what version was installed. Presumably 1.30.1.6497-5fc2e0894 but I don’t know how to check.

It is currently still updating its media libraries, but not being able to use the server settings is troubling.

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Okay, I got it working with the latest, but here’s what I had to do:

  1. Open Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor.
  2. Scroll down to anything that starts with Plex. Double click it and force quit.
  3. Now that Plex is stopped, go to Applications and drag it to the trash.
  4. Download 1.30.1 media server.
  5. Unzip the file, and manually move it to Applications. (Do not double click it and let it try to move itself to Applications, because this will fail and will have to go back to step 1.)
  6. Now you can double click Plex Media Server in the Applications folder to get it started.

Now that I’ve done this, it seems okay. I can access server settings again.

Something strange, on my mac if I go to the plex.tv downloads page for Mac it will ONLY give me version 1.30.0 which is still broken and will not work. If I visit the downloads page on my Windows 10 computer, it shows me instead version 1.30.1 for Mac. I downloaded it there, put it on a USB stick, and used that to get it to my Mac computer. No idea why the website is showing me an older non-working version on my Mac. :frowning:

Anyway, I guess it’s finally fixed, maybe, hopefully, who knows.

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1.30 = public release
1.31 = Plex Pass / beta release

Toggle Plex Pass Downloads OFF/ON to switch.

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Oh, I see. That explains why the automatic updater downloaded a broken version despite 1.30.1 being available, and also explains why I couldn’t see it on the website from my Mac. (The plex.tv website has its own issues and won’t let me log in on Mac, it seems.)

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Not aware of any problems with plex.tv and Macs. I can login to plex.tv and download Plex Media Server using either Safari or Chrome on my 2011 MacBook Pro.

There are issues with Plex Web when using Safari on some older Macs, circa 2010. The menu bar at the top, with search box, activity indicator, etc does not work. If you run into such problems, use Chrome as a workaround.

Check the Server Update Channel setting in Settings → Server_Name → General.

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I’m using an up-to-date version of Chrome, not Safari. It’s a Mac Mini (late 2014). When I click “Log in” on this forum it says:

{“errors”:[{“code”:1007,“message”:“Internal Server Error. Something went wrong on our end”,“status”:500}]}

After messing around, I think I found the issue. My Plex account on the Mac was set to a managed user, which was actually logged in but hides the plex pass switch on the downloads page. It also creates this error when logging into the forums. After switching back to the admin user, I can log in to the forum, and also can see the plex pass switch on the download page.

So, I guess the forum has a problem if you try to log in while currently switched to a managed user.

Thanks for the tip. Though… I don’t actually want to be on the beta update channel. Especially after being bit by this issue since 1.29.1… but I guess I’ll stick with this version for now because there isn’t a working alternative unless I want to go back to 1.29.0.

Not having selected beta wasn’t really the issue. The issue was just that I’d seen people say an update had fixed it, but neglected to mention it was beta channel only. So… I naively hit auto-update. Then when that failed I tried to download latest and re-install… then when that failed I noticed that the version was different on my Win10 computer, which finally led me toward a solution.

Anyway, I’m glad to report that 1.30.1 beta does appear to fix the issue finally.

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