Plex has stopped working altogether

General Discussions
21

@jediobijohn said:
WHAT THE HELL HAHAH. It was the damn vpn! but Ive never had an issue with that before! Is there something i need to change that would allow that??
@ntrevena thanks for all your help man

No problems buddy. At least we narrowed down where the problem is.

To be honest, I’ve not played with VPN’s for a long time. I kinda wouldn’t know where to start with your setup. I’d suggest firing the VPN back up again, and watching the VPN logs.

Chances are, it’s not letting Plex traffic through, or it’s using a DNS server that’s not resolving Plex.tv properly.

As a minor suggestion, try changing your VPN DNS servers to use a known working server, like 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. These are Google’s public DNS servers.

Good luck!

22

@jediobijohn said:
EDIT: I dont know how but that fixed it, syncing all my data now, lets hope that it stays fixed!

That’s great news. You might want to select the answer for your post. That way, if someone else has a similar issue in the future, they will get the answers that best fit :slight_smile:

Glad it’s working for you mate. All the best!

23

@ntrevena Unfortunately it stopped working when i turned the VPN on. If you dont mind, what did you mean my that last bit? “Chances are, it’s not letting Plex traffic through, or it’s using a DNS server that’s not resolving Plex.tv properly. As a minor suggestion, try changing your VPN DNS servers to use a known working server, like 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. These are Google’s public DNS servers.”
Im using PIA, here are a few of my settings, if anything jumps out to you let me know please:
-Connection type UDP
-Remote port Auto
-Request port forwarding (disabled)
-PIA MACE (blocks ads trackers and malware) (disabled)
-VPN Kill Switch (Disabled)
-IPv6 protection (ENABLED) - this is the one that i think might be causing me trouble

  • Use small packets (disabled)

  • Enable debug mode (enabled)

  • Data encryption (aes-128)

  • Data authentication (sha-1)

  • Handshake (rsa-2048)

anything look suspicious to you?

24

@jediobijohn said:
Im using PIA, here are a few of my settings, if anything jumps out to you let me know please

Ok, so PIA are a VPN provider, not a method for connecting. How you connect to a VPN determines how you configure it.

Basically, every type of protocol used in any one VPN is configured differently.

OpenVPN will be configured differently to PPTP, which is different again to IPSec. All are different types of VPN protocol.

One provider (in your case PIA) can provide options for connections using many different types of protocols.

-Connection type UDP
-Remote port Auto
-Request port forwarding (disabled)
-PIA MACE (blocks ads trackers and malware) (disabled)
-VPN Kill Switch (Disabled)
-IPv6 protection (ENABLED) - this is the one that i think might be causing me trouble

  • Use small packets (disabled)

  • Enable debug mode (enabled)

  • Data encryption (aes-128)

  • Data authentication (sha-1)

  • Handshake (rsa-2048)

Nothing here is really out of the ordinary, it’s how your applications route through the VPN that seems to be causing the issues. Is the VPN a requirement?

If it’s not, then removing it altogether would resolve the issue.

If it is a requirement, then you may have to force Plex to use a local connection instead of the VPN.

Unfortunately Plex requires at least minimal access to the internet to function properly, so there is no way around it.

I personally cannot really help you with the VPN, and it’s not really Plex’s fault it cannot connect through your VPN either.

Is it possible to maybe talk to your VPN provider?

I hope you can figure it out mate. Maybe post if you find a solution. I imagine others use a VPN as well :slight_smile:

25

@ntrevena You’re awesome, ok I think it is definitely the VPN, which is crazy cause it’s slowing down everything in plex too. So how do i “force” plex to use a local connection. Im not interested in plex using remote access so i would be perfectly fine with that.

26

@jediobijohn said:
@ntrevena You’re awesome, ok I think it is definitely the VPN, which is crazy cause it’s slowing down everything in plex too. So how do i “force” plex to use a local connection. Im not interested in plex using remote access so i would be perfectly fine with that.

I honestly don’t know within your system.

On Linux, you can use The IPTables firewall to force it. On OSX or Windows, I have no idea.

It also depends on the protocol and connection application you’re using.

The application or protocol could be over-riding your system settings. No matter how you look at it, the only ones who can really answer your questions about the VPN stuff is your provider.

In this case PIA. I had a quick look through their forums and support pages and couldnt find anything about it, so you’ll probably have to log a support ticket with them.

Sorry I can’t offer any more help mate. Good luck!