Server Version#: 1.21.1.3830
Player Version#: NA
Tuner Make/Model: HDHR
Guide/Lineup name: DVR—Local Broadcast Listings (74 channels)
Using XMLTV?: NO
Channel number/Name: NA
I shutdown my PMS to mount my internal drives into the new plastic drive trays I purchased on eBay. Booted up the server and walked away. Came back probably 30 minutes later can noticed I couldn’t connect to PMS with my web browser. Apparently PMS doesn’t start up until someone logs onto the server console?? Is there a setting in PMS to make sure your not missing recordings if your PMS reboots when you are away? My SageTV & BlueIris servers both automatically startup and record after any reboots, be they power problems or something worse. I must be missing something as its not possible that a DVR wouldn’t automatically start so it can record if it needs to. -Bill
I take it this is about Plex running on a Windows machine?
By default, Plex is running under your user account and therefore requires you to login to start. There’s a number of threads about how to run PMS as a service that’ll autostart on startup (without signing in etc.).
So I think you are saying there isn’t a setting in PMS to autostart the DVR? It sounds like I would need to cobble something together to do that? Is Plex planning on removing the DVR functionality? It perPLEXing that it could be missing such a basic functionality that a DVR must have!
It seems I shouldn’t have an expectation, if running on windows that my shows will always record. Like after a windows update or a power glitch. I’ve already experienced multiple glitches with the DVR that stopped recording shows for some unknown to me, reason. Plex is still working on that, although the feedback is quite sparse to be kind.
As @tom80H mentioned there are ways to run Plex as a service so Plex is started when the computer reboots. One such option is discussed in the forum post PMS as a service. At one point I had heard that running Plex as a Service required the service to be stopped in order to apply new PMS updates. I am not sure if that is still the case as I do not use the Plex Service mentioned. Instead, I have configured my Windows Plex machines to auto-logon and have them set to lock after one minute of inactivity. This allows me to update without worrying about the service.
I guess setting autologon is almost safe if you use a different account and password than any other machine on your network. You password is stored unencrypted in the registry with autologon. Maybe that’s an option, really seems like kludges should not be necessary for a product I paid for. It would be understandable for something free to expect kludges to be necessary, but from what I have experienced, the few I have tried all have the features a DVR should have. Auto Start, Manual Recording to get around guide oddities, capability to set a record on something not in the guide yet, adjustable skips, Quick scroll to the end of the guide, which is half implemented with their 1 week ahead pick-list to name just a few that are not there in this DVR.
You didn’t mention what OS you’re using, but if you’re using a recent version of Windows 10, check to see how the following Windows setting is configured:
Setting this to on will allow Windows to start programs which are configured to run at login to help speed the sign-in process if you don’t do so immediately. The side effect of this is that Plex should be started without having to configure auto-login. There are caveats to this, such as the fact that it doesn’t work if the PC is domain-joined, or if there are other policies in place which would prevent it.
Turns out my Win10 PC had that enabled, must be the default as I had never even noticed that setting before and I’ve been running Win10 since it came out on all my machines for many years now. But after my restart Plex hadn’t started 30 minutes after it came back up. Not sure it works like you thought. -Bill
I wasn’t expressing a theory, I was sharing experience (it works exactly as described on my own Windows 10 test server). As I said, there are things which can cause it not to work; perhaps you’re experiencing one of those. The last paragraph of the article I linked describes a few.
