Ever since the upgrad to El Capitan, I’ve experienced plexconnect not running. I reload the daemon via the following sequence but a day or so later I check and its not running again. This never occurred under Yosemite, the daemon was solidly on even after rebooting (as it should). Is there a trick to get the daemon running like it used to, under El Cap?
In terminal: cd to OSX folder under /PlexConnect-master/Support
sudo ./install.bash
Matt
Is this a mac or a hackintosh? What version of OS X are you running when you look at the about this mac? For example mine is 10.11.2 Beta (15C47a). Is your mac going to sleep also what is your energy saver settings set to? Also does your ip change possibly or do you have a static IP set on the mac or dhcp reservation on your router? When the daemon stops what does the error exactly?
iMac late 2012
El Cap 10.11.1
Set to never sleep
Dedicated ip
Atv3 only shows 2 items.
If I run launchctl list | Greg plexconnect I get 0 0 com.plex.plecconnect.bash
If I relaunch the plist then the atv3 works with plexconnect
Same thing happens to me I just installed it today it ran great for about three hours and then when I exited the video I was watching it went out to the AppleTV desktop which only showed “computers” and “settings”.
i’m running windows 10
(Edit) Actually I was running Plex connect through the python GUI, that’s probably why it was shutting off. I had a whole bunch of extra python processes and that’s probably why it was causing the Plex connect thread to crash. So I killed them all and I restarted Plex connect from the .py file
I don’t know if why it does this on El Capitan is similar to why it was happening on windows 10, I don’t like El Capitan that much I prefer mavericks when it comes to the most recent versions of OS X.
At the moment my daemon is still active and so is plexconnect (it’s been about 24 hours). Looking in activity monitor reveals 5 python process.
Hm. It’s running more or less stable on my machine - El Capitan, too. Sometimes I see startup issues, but once it’s running it typically stays that way.
I have no idea why you see 5 python processes. PlexConnect should come in four: main PlexConnect; DNS; WebServer :80; WebServer :443.
…just checking: I see 5 as well. Hm - maybe a thread for the communication proxy?
@mschlotz said:
At the moment my daemon is still active and so is plexconnect (it’s been about 24 hours). Looking in activity monitor reveals 5 python process.
Yah I had those 5 processes running, plus another 3 or 4 because I had several IDLE windows open. Baa instructed me on the finer points of simply opening a command window in the Plex connect folder and typing Plexconnect.py. It looks like you’re OK, let me know if it stops running again. I didn’t like El Capitan at all when I tried it, but maybe the latest build will run better than the one that I tried.
If I can install this as a task that starts at boot time or right when I login, I can set up the task so it restarts if it fails. Is there a way to install python as a service, I can set that up to restart three times in a row if it stops and then start all over again after a minute. I have to do that with a couple of problem services that I have.
OK the instructions say that I have to use an extension called PyWin32, I’m using python 2.7.9. 32-bit only version. I’m not clear exactly which version of the extension I need to get for the version of python that I have.
OK I think I see which version I need they are saying to download the latest version which is 219, a Win32 package for python 2.7 that should be the right one correct? The instructions state very clearly to do not download the 32/64 bit packages, so I have only been getting the 32-bit packages. I’m running a 32-bit machine anyways, I don’t like 64-bit but it’s also because I have some old hardware that requires 16-bit support.
Ah! The batch files are already in the Plex connect folder so all I really need is this app! OK I’ll give this a shot after I finish up the 50 things I am doing at once.
Is there a daemon like this for OS X? Because that might help mschlotz out, if it could be started when OS X starts.
Oh! I see the OSX startup files right there in the folder next to the windows batch files.
I had to re-write the installer batch file to get it to run, the paths as entered did not work. Maybe because I just extracted the zip and it left nested folders in the “Plexconnect Master” folder. I tried to run the “start” batch file but it only opened the Python folder. So I just started the service from my Services.msc management console, it’s nice and solid. It’s all running great, I think this might be a solution for Mr Schlotz as well.
(Edit) Gah! In Windows 10 you can’t just type “Python” into the command line like you could with earlier OS, you can only do it from the program folder. Unless I missed a step somewhere. So all of those batch files failed, I had altered them to include exact paths but it still didn’t work. So I have to start Plexconnect.py directly else it won’t be running.
Unless there is some way of putting Python into the system so I can type it from anywhere and load it. The PY commands invoke Python, but you can’t invoke Python from a command line without being in the direct path. However, typing “Plexconnect.py” from command line starts it right there. So I just want to automate that process, maybe I’ll just create a task that calls it up. But I think getting Plexconnect to load at startup might solve the problem of it dropping, for Windows or OSX.
XweAponX, you might have missed my point. I AM running the daemon i.e. plexconnect automatically loads upon OSX boot. The issue is that at some point it just stops and that NEVER happened prior to running El Capitan. So, it appears something was changed in El Cap regarding how this daemon works thus causing the problem and I’m searching for a solution to the OSX problem - not windows BTW.
I don’t know how that system works in OSX much less El Capitan, in Windows it is set up as a Service that starts automatically. I remember there being a launcher in OSX where you could load apps you wanted to start, but I don’t know how Plexconnect is launched. Are you using, what is it called, “OpenPlex”? If so maybe it has something to do with that. Setting it up in Windows is a disparate set of steps, some of which don’t work out as expected, I could not set up an autolaunch because Plexconnect is not being started with the Python service. Windows is not fortunate to have a helper app.
I’ll read up on how it’s set up on Mac and see if I can see anything and I’ll start a new thread for my issues, sorry.
(Edit) I was hoping to see if there was a relationship between why my service was shutting off and yours, but in my case it was due to launching Plexconnect.py from the Idle gui, it creates extra processes. But if you are auto launching it on El Cap, setting up that process is WAY different than the way it runs on PC. But you mentioned you have 5 python threads so it looks like both Mac and PC do the same thing in the end. Maybe there is a timer attached to your start process. If there are any new builds of El Cap, you could try those. I think El Cap is the buggiest OS X I’ve ever seen, but I only worked with it for a short time. But I thought I saw a new build released just recently.
(Edit 2) Ok it looks like on Mac it loads as a LaunchDaemon like it would on an iDevice. What would cause a LaunchDaemon to be killed? This is where the Mac-PC similarity is, LaunchDaemons are like my Windows Services, but in Windows, these can be unstable, so I have to tell the ones that occasionally stop to restart. Isn’t there a way to tell the PlexConnect Daemon to restart if it stops?
KeepAlive I think may do it. But if it restarts you would need to exit the hijack and go back in.
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<true/>
This modified plist should do it I believe:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.plex.plexconnect.bash</string>
<key>Program</key>
<string>__INSTALLERPATH__/PlexConnect.bash</string>
<key>UserName</key>
<string>root</string>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<true/>
<key>WorkingDirectory</key>
<string>__PLEXCONNECTPATH__</string>
<key>StandardOutPath</key>
<!--string>./PlexConnect_stdout.log</string-->
<string>/dev/null</string> <!--skip output - swap comment markers for debugging-->
<key>StandardErrorPath</key>
<!--string>./PlexConnect_stderr.log</string-->
<string>/dev/null</string> <!--skip output - swap comment markers for debugging-->
</dict>
</plist>
You could edit the support/OSX/com.plex.plexconnect.bash.plist file in your PlexConnect dir then install the plist just like you did on the first post.
Good chance he’s not using OpenPlex if he’s using terminal to install the plist.
Or…
<!--string>./PlexConnect_stdout.log</string-->
<string>/dev/null</string> <!--skip output - swap comment markers for debugging-->
<key>StandardErrorPath</key>
<!--string>./PlexConnect_stderr.log</string-->
<string>/dev/null</string> <!--skip output - swap comment markers for debugging-->
start with modifying the debugging/error logging options and check if the sudden shutdown leaves any marks for further investigation.
I have a little script file I run from the desktop (so the wife can actually when something is not working and she want to watch movies - btw, why does always happen when I’m gone 
). I run it a while ago just to see if plexconnect is still active. It basically reads the status, stops it, restarts it, then reads the status again. The interesting part is at the bottom re: deleting expired sessions. Hmm… not quite sure what to make of this. Anyone?
Last login: Sat Nov 21 10:08:29 on ttys000
The-iMac:~ temp1$ /Users/temp1/Desktop/Plex\ FIX.sh ; exit;
Checking for status…
Password:
627 0 com.plex.plexconnect.bash
Stopping plexconnect…
Restarting plexconnect…
Checking plexconnect status…
3959 0 com.plex.plexconnect.bash
logout
Saving session…
…copying shared history…
…saving history…truncating history files…
…completed.
Deleting expired sessions…3 completed.
Those might be sessions that “stalled” previously. Did you write the script to do that or does Plexconnect just do it automatically?
If they are not “stalled” Plexconnect instances/sessions, than maybe you have more than one Plexconnect instance running, possibly even loading. When you run that script, shouldn’t it be only one expired session? The session you are killing by running the script.
Can you write a script that checks for all Plexconnect sessions? That way you can see if there are any extra sessions running. That might be why it seems to be “dropping”, a new session might start that steals focus from the previous running session.
I like that Keepalive idea.
@wahlman.j said:
PlexConnect/support/OSX/com.plex.plexconnect.bash.plist at master · iBaa/PlexConnect · GitHubKeepAlive I think may do it. But if it restarts you would need to exit the hijack and go back in.
<key>KeepAlive</key> <true/>This modified plist should do it I believe:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>Label</key> <string>com.plex.plexconnect.bash</string> <key>Program</key> <string>__INSTALLERPATH__/PlexConnect.bash</string> <key>UserName</key> <string>root</string> <key>RunAtLoad</key> <true/> <key>KeepAlive</key> <true/> <key>WorkingDirectory</key> <string>__PLEXCONNECTPATH__</string> <key>StandardOutPath</key> <!--string>./PlexConnect_stdout.log</string--> <string>/dev/null</string> <!--skip output - swap comment markers for debugging--> <key>StandardErrorPath</key> <!--string>./PlexConnect_stderr.log</string--> <string>/dev/null</string> <!--skip output - swap comment markers for debugging--> </dict> </plist>You could edit the support/OSX/com.plex.plexconnect.bash.plist file in your PlexConnect dir then install the plist just like you did on the first post.
Good chance he’s not using OpenPlex if he’s using terminal to install the plist.
So far the KeepAlive seems to be doing the trick. Appreciate the tip wahlman.j assuming the comment about ‘restarts’ is in ref to a test showing ‘0 0 com.plex.plexconnect.bash’ and me having to turn off/unload the plist followed by reloading it, correct?
I believe it will reload it for you if/when it stops.
Hi, i have 10.11.2, i try to install OpenPlex installer but I can’t see nothing, installation can’t start… why?
Not sure post a log from your console.app, also please post in the OpenPlex topic instead of hijacking other topics.
