I’ve been having problems with remotely accessing Plex lately (after many months of it working well). Playback can be slow or disconnects. One possible reason I’ve found is that the external IP address Plex reports is incorrect - seems to be stuck on a VPN server address from the past. Whatever the case, it’s definitely not the public IP address that’s reported by whatismyip.com.
I’ve deleted all of my servers from Settings->Devices and logged back into the sole QNAP NAS server. I’ve also uninstalled and reinstalled it. Nothing seems to work - remote access always fails, even when logged in.
Can anyone suggest how to clear and reset the external IP address Plex uses?
Last thing I tried doing was disabling and re-enabling remote access (failed), and then toggling the manual port entry. I did note that with the manual port entry turned off, the (wrong) external IP address identified had the port listed as 0: 107.181.189.42 : 0
When I turned it back on, still failed, but at least the (again, wrong) external IP address did include the port, like so: 107.181.189.42 : 32400 . Note that when I first set this all up, I found that I had to manually set the port in order for it to work with my Unifi Security Gateway (with uPnP enabled).
Hi @ChuckPA , curious if you have any suggestions? Any ideas where/why Plex caches external IP addresses, and if there’s a way to remove or reset? If reinstalling server doesn’t help, I’m stumped.
Thanks for any advice you (or anyone) might be able to share!
PMS nor Plex.tv cache your addresses. This is the puzzling part to me as well.
Yesterday was holiday here and I had taken the day off with family.
Your timing is good. I just got caught up with my backlog.
Your database really needs to be optimized (which is done during maintenance time if you’ve enabled it and the QNAP is running) because you added a ton of photos. This is just like adding a ton of movie, tv, or music media. Each addition is an indexed entry. (3 log files full of entries )
Your system is coming up as ‘not reachable’. It seems to have trouble reaching to Plex.tv but that may be a false-positive due to being swamped with photos.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:17.261 [0x7f04e0511700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 330.000000 ms to retrieve 75 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:18.261 [0x7f04f1bff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 230.000000 ms to retrieve 39 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:18.377 [0x7f04ef3ff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 360.000000 ms to retrieve 75 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:19.058 [0x7f04dfbff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 360.000000 ms to retrieve 75 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:19.080 [0x7f04ecbff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 220.000000 ms to retrieve 39 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:19.096 [0x7f04e0511700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 580.000000 ms to retrieve 75 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:19.522 [0x7f04f6d11700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 210.000000 ms to retrieve 10 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:19.535 [0x7f04fbef9700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 310.000000 ms to retrieve 75 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:19.544 [0x7f04f1bff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 220.000000 ms to retrieve 75 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:21.003 [0x7f04fb7ff700] WARN - NAT: PMP, timed out waiting for response.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:21.584 [0x7f04ecbff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 370.000000 ms to retrieve 75 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:21.610 [0x7f04fcbff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 220.000000 ms to retrieve 39 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:26.773 [0x7f04f2fff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 260.000000 ms to retrieve 10 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:26.841 [0x7f04f1bff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 210.000000 ms to retrieve 75 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:26.866 [0x7f04fabff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 210.000000 ms to retrieve 1 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:26.894 [0x7f04ef3ff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 220.000000 ms to retrieve 39 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:26.896 [0x7f04dfbff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 460.000000 ms to retrieve 75 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:26.960 [0x7f04effff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 210.000000 ms to retrieve 39 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:27.571 [0x7f04ecbff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 380.000000 ms to retrieve 75 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:30.100 [0x7f04effff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 220.000000 ms to retrieve 39 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:30.214 [0x7f04ef3ff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 290.000000 ms to retrieve 75 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:30.218 [0x7f04dfbff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 330.000000 ms to retrieve 75 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:30.754 [0x7f04ed623700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 260.000000 ms to retrieve 75 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:30.777 [0x7f04f1bff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 310.000000 ms to retrieve 75 items.
Nov 22, 2017 10:57:34.925 [0x7f04fcbff700] WARN - SLOW QUERY: It took 360.000000 ms to retrieve 75 items.
Nov 22, 2017 11:03:35.857 [0x7f04dfbff700] ERROR - LPE: unknown item 77917.
The “wrong” IP (that Plex is finding) is 107.181.189.42; checking whatismyip.com gives me the correct, public (non LAN) IP: 97.113.xxx.xxx. Happy to share the full public IP privately if it helps, but suspect the issue is that Plex keeps attempting to connect via the (wrong) 107.181.189.42 IP.
As suggested, I optimized the database at 3:23 PST, then deactivated and reactivated remote access (which failed with the same wrong IP as I just shared above) at 3:25 PST. New logs which should show latest activity attached.
Perhaps a good test (if the logs don’t suddenly shine sunlight on this for you) is to delete the photos library from Plex?
Edit2: I also did the Plex Dance a week or so ago, because I wasn’t getting IMDB ratings to show for everything. However, I didn’t do the dance with the photos - just TV shows and Movies. FWIW?
Yes, it’s for the server called AMBER, which is running on a QNAP NAS located internally on fixed IP: 192.168.1.200
Your comment about slow access made me wonder about drive space, so beyond signing in and out (and trying to enable remote access several times), I also cleared a ton of hard drive space. No idea if it’s part of the issue, but figured I’d try. I also rescanned the library and optimized the library again after I deleted the content.
That said, still no luck. When I enable remote access, I do see the green “remote access enabled” text for a split second, but then it’s replaced with red/no connection.
Just because it’s a habit now, attached are the latest logs. Mystified! Especially because this used to work like a charm, for over the last year and a half, same network, NAS, internet provider, network hardware, etc. I have no idea where that wrong IP address is coming from…
UPDATE: just noticed that the wrong IP address Plex is finding has changed! The original “bad” one ended in .189.42 - the new one (as you can see in the screenshot link above) is .189.34! Significant?
Ok, I SSHed into the QNAP NAS and ran traceroute. I’ll paste the results below. One thing that is interesting is that it doesn’t seem to find the correct external IP of 97.113.29.XXX (as reported by whatismyip.com). (Note that I left the trace running for a while, but it just kept displaying * * *)
[~] # traceroute -m 128 plex.tv
traceroute to plex.tv (34.252.160.54), 128 hops max, 46 byte packets
1 10.35.0.1 (10.35.0.1) 5.835 ms 5.806 ms 5.997 ms
2 107.181.189.61 (107.181.189.61) 6.259 ms 6.398 ms 6.025 ms
3 te0-0-1-3.nr11.b049936-1.yvr01.atlas.cogentco.com (38.88.7.241) 7.181 ms 7.102 ms 6.846 ms
4 te0-0-0-21.rcr21.yvr01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.24.46.165) 6.898 ms te0-7-1-4.rcr21.yvr01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.24.46.169) 6.948 ms 7.004 ms
5 be3238.ccr21.sea02.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.1.5) 10.555 ms 10.104 ms 10.644 ms
6 sea-b1-link.telia.net (213.248.86.145) 10.122 ms 10.332 ms 10.134 ms
7 sea-b2-link.telia.net (62.115.115.3) 10.747 ms 13.184 ms 10.254 ms
8 chi-b21-link.telia.net (62.115.117.49) 58.664 ms 59.141 ms 58.588 ms
9 nyk-bb3-link.telia.net (80.91.246.163) 80.270 ms nyk-bb4-link.telia.net (62.115.137.58) 80.799 ms nyk-bb3-link.telia.net (80.91.246.163) 83.306 ms
10 ldn-bb3-link.telia.net (62.115.135.95) 146.011 ms ldn-bb2-link.telia.net (213.155.133.6) 146.686 ms 162.808 ms
11 ldn-b7-link.telia.net (213.155.136.61) 146.566 ms 147.058 ms ldn-b7-link.telia.net (62.115.138.155) 147.090 ms
12 a100row-ic-304738-ldn-b5.c.telia.net (213.248.66.70) 144.573 ms a100row-ic-304741-ldn-b5.c.telia.net (80.239.135.226) 142.060 ms 143.166 ms
13 54.239.101.90 (54.239.101.90) 162.723 ms 54.239.101.108 (54.239.101.108) 169.135 ms 54.239.101.128 (54.239.101.128) 175.040 ms
14 54.239.101.83 (54.239.101.83) 152.797 ms 54.239.101.63 (54.239.101.63) 154.117 ms 54.239.101.61 (54.239.101.61) 153.732 ms
15 * * *
16 54.239.44.138 (54.239.44.138) 153.052 ms 54.239.44.140 (54.239.44.140) 152.723 ms 54.239.44.144 (54.239.44.144) 153.037 ms
17 * * *
18 52.93.6.136 (52.93.6.136) 195.697 ms 52.93.6.128 (52.93.6.128) 196.995 ms 52.93.7.168 (52.93.7.168) 159.448 ms
19 52.93.36.71 (52.93.36.71) 155.940 ms 52.93.7.21 (52.93.7.21) 152.690 ms 52.93.36.49 (52.93.36.49) 154.473 ms
20 52.93.7.6 (52.93.7.6) 175.499 ms 52.93.36.54 (52.93.36.54) 153.242 ms 52.93.7.20 (52.93.7.20) 177.350 ms
21 52.93.7.57 (52.93.7.57) 153.866 ms 52.93.7.61 (52.93.7.61) 153.043 ms 52.93.36.81 (52.93.36.81) 151.677 ms
22 * * *
23 * * *
24 * * *
What’s weird is that I seem to get a very different set of results if I trace route from my Mac Terminal Window (connnected via Wifi). Pasted below. I’m wondering if maybe there’s something strange going on with the QNAP Virtual Network adapter? Or is this just a symptom of Plex.tv having multiple addresses/redundancy?
avrignaud-35520:~ avrignaud$ traceroute -m 128 plex.tv
traceroute: Warning: plex.tv has multiple addresses; using 54.77.197.74
traceroute to plex.tv (54.77.197.74), 128 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 securitygateway (192.168.1.1) 15.623 ms 7.134 ms 8.161 ms
2 tukw-dsl-gw11-75.tukw.qwest.net (63.231.10.75) 10.863 ms 9.205 ms 13.786 ms
3 tukw-agw1.inet.qwest.net (71.217.186.81) 11.448 ms 18.000 ms 14.358 ms
4 sea-brdr-02.inet.qwest.net (67.14.41.190) 9.299 ms 13.099 ms 12.841 ms
5 ae-20.a00.sttlwa01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.9.133) 14.000 ms 14.126 ms 22.764 ms
6 ae-9.r04.sttlwa01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.117) 15.404 ms 3.808 ms ae-14.r05.sttlwa01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.133) 3.084 ms
7 ae-9.r20.sttlwa01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.9) 15.896 ms 15.106 ms 16.293 ms
8 ae-0.r24.nycmny01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.14) 81.515 ms 85.929 ms 81.614 ms
9 ae-9.r24.londen12.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.19) 154.891 ms 150.881 ms 152.563 ms
10 ae-1.r04.londen05.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.141) 151.573 ms ae-1.r04.londen12.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.126) 149.643 ms 142.812 ms
11 82.112.101.106 (82.112.101.106) 154.553 ms 2068.935 ms 1952.512 ms
12 * * *
13 54.239.100.59 (54.239.100.59) 1840.195 ms *
54.239.100.81 (54.239.100.81) 187.369 ms
14 * * *
15 54.239.44.150 (54.239.44.150) 186.639 ms * *
16 * * *
17 * 52.93.6.148 (52.93.6.148) 189.861 ms *
18 * 52.93.7.15 (52.93.7.15) 199.508 ms
52.93.7.29 (52.93.7.29) 177.041 ms
19 52.93.7.4 (52.93.7.4) 199.454 ms * *
20 52.93.36.147 (52.93.36.147) 2959.494 ms
52.93.7.105 (52.93.7.105) 319.336 ms
52.93.36.141 (52.93.36.141) 184.196 ms
21 * * *
22 * * *
Show me your QNAP network config? Are you using Virtual Switches?
Are you running PMS native or in a Container Station image (Docker) ? I see the 10.35.0.1 address
Your Docker question caused me to remember that I had played recently with trying to set up Sonarr via a Docker container - and then, having no luck there, duped a Win10 VM and played with it there. And Container Station was showing up in the Virtual Switch screen.
Container Station showed the Sonarr container running, so I stopped it and removed it. I also deleted the extra Win10 VM (where I’d also tried to play with Sonarr), and also removed the Container Station entries from the virtual switch. I then removed the Container Station app entirely. Finally, I signed out of Plex, uninstalled it, and shut down the entire NAS.
I just powered it back up and verified that there’s no Container Station entries. Below are the virtual switch summary pages:
Reinstalled Plex Server, and went through the initial new user setup - logged in, added several libraries. Unfortunately, yet again, after all that, still fails to enable remote access:
Note that the new, “wrong” IP address is now a .38 - so it’s changed again. However, it’s still not the public IP of 97.113.29.XXX as reported by whatismyip.com.
Logs attached for this new install, hopefully smaller/easier to parse! Only two libraries I’ve added are Movies and TV Shows.
I have a few images for you. I also wonder if you have your default gateway set correctly.
I have successful docker containers running without incident. They don’t bother PMS whatsoever.
If Docker (Container Station) was interfering, you’d see 172.16.0.0 → 172.31.0.0 as an IP.
I do see a LOT of database migrations and schema complaining which I should not be seeing. Did you do a version change or fresh install?
If not, your DB is borked but a separate issue.
Also time to look at your Preferences.xml file. See, if for some bizarre reason, you have the old IP referenced there.
If you do, Stop PMS, edit it in vi and remove it then Start PMS.
The default gateway was set to the first option, in the screenshot below, where it automatically detected it. Just to try something different I selected the second option - which only has a single item on the dropdown menu.
I think the database migrations are because I just (a few hours ago) uninstalled and reinstalled Plex. So, hopefully that’s a red herring and we can ignore.
Can you share a path to the Preferences.xml file on the QNAP NAS, per chance? I can’t find it in filestation, and not having luck digging around directories when SSHed in via Terminal.
Thank you again for all of your thoughts/help here!
Here is where it gets stuck and the problem as I see it.
traceroute to plex.tv (34.252.160.54), 128 hops max, 46 byte packets
1 10.35.0.1 (10.35.0.1) 5.835 ms 5.806 ms 5.997 ms
2 107.181.189.61 (107.181.189.61) 6.259 ms 6.398 ms 6.025 ms
The very first hop out is to two different subnets.
What is 10.35.0.1 ? A VM? A router ??
The paths diverge at that point… One via qwest and the other telia.
Figured it out! I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the 10.35.0.1 address was - no router in the path, and my VPN has been off on the client machines. But that got me thinking, and I remembered I had played with enabling the VPN on the QNAP - and for some reason, it was on. Turned it off, and Plex is happy again!
So, good news is that this was 100% user error - bad news is that I’m an idiot. But thank you very much for poking at this - I was completely stumped, and it’s a huge relief to figure out. Thank you!
)
When I enable remote access, I do see the green “remote access enabled” text for a split second, but then it’s replaced with red/no connection.
