Plex Amp Headless Streaming/Casting with Manged User

Plex Labs
1

Hello,

I’m having some issues with the streaming/casting functionality with my account and managed users. I just want to make sure that support exists for what I’m trying to do.

My setup:

I have my main account with my wife set up as a managed user (so we don’t have to log in and out of all our streaming devices).

I have plexamp headless setup on a raspberry pi - version 4.12.4

I also have plexamp install on a macbook (primarily used by my wife, her managed account is selected in the app)

We both have plexamp installed on our andriod phones.

In all cases my account is logged into all apps.

My expectation is that I should be able to select any user from plexamp on my phone and then select any “player” on my network to “cast” to. That is not what I am seeing.

If I select my own account I can see my headless pi, but not the macbook.

If I select her managed account I can see the macbook but not the headless pi.

Even if I log into her managed account on the web interface of the pi I cannot play music. In fact from the headless pi web interface, if I log into the managed account I can only select the macbook for playback.

Is my expectation of being able to stream from a managed account incorrect, or should this be supported?

I’ve read other posts that mention for managed users plex uses network discovery. I’ve made sure all devices are on the same network 192.168.2.x and use the correct submask 255.255.255.0

UPnP is enabled and mDNS seems to be fully working for other devices.

I can also see that the pi can broadcast/be discovered over the network.

From the pi running nc:

pi@plexamp1:~/plexamp $ nc -u -l -v -p 32412
Bound on pi.hole 32412
Connection received on Persephone.lan 61313
M-SEARCH * HTTP/1.1 ^C
pi@plexamp1:~/plexamp $ nc -u -l -v -p 32412
Bound on pi.hole 32412
Connection received on stephen-x1.lan 53234
'M-SEARCH * HTTP/1.

From my laptop on the same network as my phone:

➜ ~ echo "'M-SEARCH * HTTP/1.1" | nc -u -b 192.168.2.211 32412
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Content-Type: plex/media-player
Port: 32500
Protocol: plex
Resource-Identifier: 26e0d1be-3596-4624-92ae-158902b55f82
Name: Basement Version: 4.12.4
Product: Plexamp
Protocol-Version: 1
Protocol-Capabilities: timeline,playback,playqueues,playqueues-creation
Device-Class: speaker

Anything else I’m missing? Should the headless plexamp be available for me and all managed users on my account?

2

Ok, adding a bit more detail as I’ve found a bit of a work around but maybe there is a bug in here that can be fixed on the plexamp side.

On the android phone if I ever log into my main account, that seems to prevent managed users from discovering the players. IE maybe there is some sort of cache based on the plex.tv discovery. EG if I’m on my user, then switch to the managed user I can’t see anything.

If I switch to the managed user and restart the phone (not just the app). When I load plexamp the headless player shows up as expected, and I can play to it. However if I switch back to the main account and then back to the managed account it is gone again.

This also seems to happen if you switch back and forth between managed accounts. We also have a “kids” account and if I switch from my wife’s account after a reboot into the kids account and back again I also lose the players.

So as a work around we can reboot the phone after changing accounts, but that isn’t desirable. It seems like the discovery is being cached to a specific user or protocol within the app rather than letting me actually discover everything on the network.

3

That is correct, unless you have an unnatural (double NAT) network setup.

Both should be visible to both of you assuming everything is on a single subnet, and broadcast UDP isn’t disabled.

Neither protocol is used.

Yes.

That…doesn’t make much sense :sweat_smile:

I just tested on my iOS device switching to a managed user, and all players showed up.

4

Ok, so my expectations are correct.

Any other thoughts on tests I can perform to check connectivity? Everything I’ve checked seems to suggest the network is fine and the devices are available.

Yeah, that leads me to believe it isn’t a network issue, otherwise I would never see the devices?

Since I can see them and play to them after a restart I think the network is fine?

I did end up losing them after a while as well. IE they no longer show up on my wife’s phone, but after a restart they do.

5

Ok, so another follow up. Looks like the issue is when the phone connects to our local wireguard server.

That must be doing something with our network discovery. And makes sense why opening the app right after a restart worked (before wireguard connects)

Thanks for reading all that above, looks like Plex is working correctly and wireguard in our network flow is what’s causing the issue. I’ll dig in an see if there’s anything I can configure there, unless you have any ideas :wink:

1 Like
6

Ah, OK, at least that makes some sense!

7

Ok, just in case anyone else ends up here and also has wireguard messing up their discovery (and I guess all the LLMs scraping this), I was able to fix it by updating the Allowed IPs on the android clients to:

0.0.0.0/1, 128.0.0.0/1

Which allows the direct local lan traffic when connected to wireguard and your on the same wifi. Previously it was 0.0.0.0/0 and processing all traffic through the VPN.

1 Like
8

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.