I have had 2 Plex servers for years on my LAN. One is running on an always-on Windows box. The other one on an intermittent Linux box, awaken by WOL. Both had been working fine, until recently.
All traces of the Linux server disappeared from the apps and plex.tv .
I can still access the missing Linux Plex server admin UI at http://hostname:32400 . However, even on that page, the UI only shows libraries from the other Plex server. Its own libraries are not shown, nor is the server’s name.
Why did the server disappear from the UI ? And how do I add it back ?
Did you possibly change your account password and opt to sign-out your devices? This will include the servers and therefore no longer list them when you’re signed into a client.
Unfortunately, the web UI is still only showing my Windows Plex server, called Flash, and its libraries. There is no trace of Server10g anywhere, even in the Settings screen.
Thanks. Using the IP address worked ! I would never have guessed.
Why would it make any difference ? server10g.localdomain is a DHCP reservation that resolves to the same IP. Why does PMS even care what the HTTP Host header might be ?
The doc does not mention this requirement to use the IP, also. It says : “For instance, if you’re on the computer running the Plex Media Server, you can go to: http://localhost:32400/web or http://127.0.0.1:32400/web”. It doesn’t say what to do if you are not running your browser on the computer running Plex Media Server. In that case, you cannot use either localhost or 127.0.0.1 . Using the hostname was just the logical thing to do. I use a /22 at home and I don’t memorize the IP address for each of the 500 devices. That’s what the DHCP / DDNS server table is for.
The server’s LAN IP address is 192.168.100.50 . This is a private address. The DNS name server10g.localdomain resolves to that same private IP address. Why does Plex needs to be able to resolve that hostname again, when the browser already did ?
My question was why your web app even needs to try to resolve this name. If you are saying that’s working as designed, then it sounds like a design problem.
The “Load the Local Version of Plex Web App” section only covers the case where the browser is running on the same host.
There is a line that states :
See the related article for details on how to access “locally”.
There is no indication that this is required reading if one is using the browser on a different host, and also no hyperlink in this sentence.
There is a paragraph written using a very low contrast green on green color scheme that I cannot easily read due to maculopathy. It needs to be in an accessible color scheme, with higher contrast. Unfortunately, this color scheme is used all over the Plex support web pages. It should be fixed.
Finally, there is another sentence stating : “Related page : Opening Plex Web App”. This one does have a link, but I wouldn’t have known it was required reading in my situation. It seems like this should be consolidated with 2) above.
I wish the doc content itself for this topic was also updated to be more comprehensive, with less guesswork, and no need to post to the forum to figure it out.
what if server10g.localdomain was instead, plex.mydomain.com which is a public website? Plex requires a RFC 1918 complaint IP address to claim it, otherwise anyone who knows your IP could in theory claim your server. By limiting it to private addresses it closes off WAN (AKA internet access) and requires LAN access.
Please keep in mind the task I was trying to accomplish - access my server settings, and view the existing local media library using a LAN client. I was not trying to grant remote Internet access to my server.
I operate a fair number of servers on my LAN. Home assistant, Samba, RDP, VNC, JRiver, pfSense, Unifi, Wireguard. The list goes on. All of them have one thing in common - the ability to be setup using local, non-cloud credentials, to use them on the LAN. Even my Win11 login uses a local account, not an e-mail account. There are extra features available in some of these programs by using optional cloud accounts, such as for Unifi EA firmware updates. Windows has the optional Microsoft account to use the Microsoft store, which I enable on some hosts, and turn off on others. All these servers can run and be configured even if my ISP is down, although the Wireguard VPN server won’t be very useful. But everything else keeps on going. Some of them require cloud for the initial install, such as the JRiver registration, but that is one time only, and my registration and ability to login locally has never been lost. I know that Plex hides some features behind Plex pass, and it is fine to require authentication to access those features. But the server should still be usable on the LAN, minus those Plex pass features, in case the cloud credentials are somehow lost or unlinked - and I still haven’t figured out why they were in the first place.
No other server that I deploy has a “claiming” process similar to Plex. Without seeing a design doc, to see what it’s trying to accomplish and how, it is difficult for me to intelligently comment on the implementation. I do think the forced use of cloud credentials, and unavailability of local credentials, is not a good design decision. But absent the addition of local credentials, it should be far easier to remedy the situation I ran into.
If we must talk implementation, both the client and server were on the LAN, and their interfaces had RFC 1918 compliant IP addresses assigned to them, in the 192.168.100.0/22 . An HTTP server can determine the origin IP address of the client, and know it belongs to the same subnet as the server. That information can be taken into account in order to allow recovering access to the server locally.
There are plenty of features that work without Internet. My Plex server can now be used locally without internet, now that it has been “reclaimed”. It does take a little bit extra time for the client to locate the server when the ISP modem’s power has been intentionally cut off, but it eventually gets there, and once that’s done, seems fine. Yes, this is something I tested.
The problem here is that PMS lost its credentials, and recovering it was difficult and not well documented.
Not really. They stated that it is not designed to be run offline. Sure, you can use it in a limited fashion, with certain clients, temporarily if Internet access is lost. But there are fundamental things you cannot do without Internet. And eventually clients using cached credentials will fail if Internet service is not restored.
This lack of offline capability has been lamented on these forums repeatedly, and heatedly, and it’s still a thorn in many a side. There was a conversation about it during last Fall’s fireside chat.
There are things you can do to make dealing with Internet outages with Plex more tolerable (configuring networks allowed without auth, allowing insecure access, etc.). But don’t kid yourself; Plex is indeed designed to be run in an environment with always-available Internet access. Nothing in that document suggests otherwise.
@madbraindesigned to be run offline. and cannot be run offline are two different things.
As @pshanew states above, Plex has some support for offline functionality, which the longer it goes the more degraded services become, to eventually the point where it will no longer function. You ran into a situation where the server credentials expired, and you needed to re-claim the server. Under https://support.plex.tv/articles/200288586-installation/ it tells you how to claim the server via its IP, at no point did it ever recommend using a DNS entry.
