Plex won't play media in fresh install in iocage jail on TrueNAS 12.0-U4

[plex_hartmanipulation_com]

Server Version#: 1.22.1.4228

The drive with my previous Plex install died and the backups of the plex config were… lacking… so I’m trying to stand up a brand new Plex jail.

Since I’m rebuilding the jails anyway I took the opportunity to upgrade from FreeNAS to TrueNAS 12.0-U4. Which overall seems pretty solid, and I recreated my other jails with no problems.

If I create a brand new jail for plex, blank dataset, no previous config, and pkg install plexmediaserver, I get version 1.22.1.4228. The server starts up ok, and finds my media ok, but if I try to play anything it just spins for a while.

I can’t find any errors in the logs. I can see it trying to start transcoding but there’s no message about any problems. It doesn’t matter if I’m playing from the web player or the Roku. It doesn’t matter whether I use the plexmediaserver or plexmediaserver-plexpass packages - I get 1.22.1.4228 either way. It doesn’t matter if I leave the default plexmediaserver_support_path or specify a different one in /etc/rc.conf.

I see several threads of people having similar issues with 1.23 in this setup, but everyone who has backed down to 1.22 seems to have had their problems clear up. The exact version I’m on is called out as being one that’s working. Regardless, I’ve tried the solutions in that thread and it makes no difference if I add the LD_LIBRARY_PATH lines to the rc script, start.sh or /etc/rc.conf.

I’ve blown away and recreated this jail about a hundred times with every combination of the above I can think of. No luck. I’m tearing my hair out. Double-frustrating because I specifically came back to town for a few days to fix all the issues caused by that drive dying, and I’ve spent a couple days just on Plex now and need to leave soon, whether it’s working or not. Then it’s just going to be stuck at “unusable” for a while.

[plex_hartmanipulation_com]

Interesting thing though. As I tried to create the simplest possible setup that would reproduce the problem so I could generate these logs (create blank jail, install plex in jail, copy single small test video into jail, play it) I got my first video to play since I started this mess.

For my test I grabbed a quick test pattern video from youtube and that played in the web player. But I’ve not found a single show or movie in the many, varied formats in my normal library that will play. I copied a single episode of a show into the same folder just to be sure there hadn’t been some miraculous break-through.

ffmpeg -i of youtube video that works:

Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'Indian Head Test Card (Classical Music in Background)-Ba93f-4rroA.mp4':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : mp42
    minor_version   : 0
    compatible_brands: isommp42
    creation_time   : 2021-03-20T05:54:42.000000Z
  Duration: 00:10:01.00, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 241 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (Main) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p(tv, bt709), 1280x720 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 109 kb/s, 30 fps, 30 tbr, 15360 tbn, 60 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2021-03-20T05:54:42.000000Z
      handler_name    : ISO Media file produced by Google Inc. Created on: 03/19/2021.
    Stream #0:1(und): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 128 kb/s (default)
    Metadata:
      creation_time   : 2021-03-20T05:54:42.000000Z
      handler_name    : ISO Media file produced by Google Inc. Created on: 03/19/2021.

ffmpeg -i of second video from the logs that doesn’t:

Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'Q-test.mkv':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : libebml v1.3.5 + libmatroska v1.4.8
    creation_time   : 2019-11-22T15:34:30.000000Z
  Duration: 00:22:50.13, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 3106 kb/s
    Chapter #0:0: start 0.042000, end 60.060000
    Metadata:
      title           : Intro start
    Chapter #0:1: start 60.060000, end 1370.133000
    Metadata:
      title           : Intro end
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (Main), yuv420p(tv, smpte170m/unknown/unknown, progressive), 640x480 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 1k tbn, 47.95 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      BPS             : 2978612
      BPS-eng         : 2978612
      DURATION        : 00:22:50.036000000
      DURATION-eng    : 00:22:50.036000000
      NUMBER_OF_FRAMES: 32848
      NUMBER_OF_FRAMES-eng: 32848
      NUMBER_OF_BYTES : 510100800
      NUMBER_OF_BYTES-eng: 510100800
      _STATISTICS_WRITING_APP: mkvmerge v19.0.0 ('Brave Captain') 64-bit
      _STATISTICS_WRITING_APP-eng: mkvmerge v19.0.0 ('Brave Captain') 64-bit
      _STATISTICS_WRITING_DATE_UTC: 2019-11-22 15:34:30
      _STATISTICS_WRITING_DATE_UTC-eng: 2019-11-22 15:34:30
      _STATISTICS_TAGS: BPS DURATION NUMBER_OF_FRAMES NUMBER_OF_BYTES
      _STATISTICS_TAGS-eng: BPS DURATION NUMBER_OF_FRAMES NUMBER_OF_BYTES
    Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: aac (LC), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp (default)
    Metadata:
      BPS             : 125375
      BPS-eng         : 125375
      DURATION        : 00:22:50.133000000
      DURATION-eng    : 00:22:50.133000000
      NUMBER_OF_FRAMES: 64225
      NUMBER_OF_FRAMES-eng: 64225
      NUMBER_OF_BYTES : 21472559
      NUMBER_OF_BYTES-eng: 21472559
      _STATISTICS_WRITING_APP: mkvmerge v19.0.0 ('Brave Captain') 64-bit
      _STATISTICS_WRITING_APP-eng: mkvmerge v19.0.0 ('Brave Captain') 64-bit
      _STATISTICS_WRITING_DATE_UTC: 2019-11-22 15:34:30
      _STATISTICS_WRITING_DATE_UTC-eng: 2019-11-22 15:34:30
      _STATISTICS_TAGS: BPS DURATION NUMBER_OF_FRAMES NUMBER_OF_BYTES
      _STATISTICS_TAGS-eng: BPS DURATION NUMBER_OF_FRAMES NUMBER_OF_BYTES
    Stream #0:2(eng): Subtitle: subrip
    Metadata:
      title           : SDH
      BPS             : 74
      BPS-eng         : 74
      DURATION        : 00:22:08.791000000
      DURATION-eng    : 00:22:08.791000000
      NUMBER_OF_FRAMES: 421
      NUMBER_OF_FRAMES-eng: 421
      NUMBER_OF_BYTES : 12450
      NUMBER_OF_BYTES-eng: 12450
      _STATISTICS_WRITING_APP: mkvmerge v19.0.0 ('Brave Captain') 64-bit
      _STATISTICS_WRITING_APP-eng: mkvmerge v19.0.0 ('Brave Captain') 64-bit
      _STATISTICS_WRITING_DATE_UTC: 2019-11-22 15:34:30
      _STATISTICS_WRITING_DATE_UTC-eng: 2019-11-22 15:34:30
      _STATISTICS_TAGS: BPS DURATION NUMBER_OF_FRAMES NUMBER_OF_BYTES
      _STATISTICS_TAGS-eng: BPS DURATION NUMBER_OF_FRAMES NUMBER_OF_BYTES

You can see they’re both h264 and aac.
Plex Media Server Logs_2021-06-30_15-49-05.zip (120.4 KB)

[plex_hartmanipulation_com]

The difference seems to be that with “direct play” set to auto, the first (youtube) video uses direct play and plays ok, but the second video tries to transcode, and doesn’t.

I don’t see any way in the web player to force it to use direct play. But on the Roku, when I set “Direct Play: Force” the second video also plays ok.

So there’s the small problem of why it’s trying to transcode something for the Roku that it can handle directly, but the much bigger problem that transcoding just seems to be completely broken. Which is basically what I thought was wrong until the youtube video worked and confused me.

[plex_hartmanipulation_com]

So probably a stupid question, but I’m a paying customer stuck with a product that flat out will not work for weeks. I’ve tried the community support route, and the community doesn’t know what the problem is.

What exactly am I supposed to do to get some kind of developer support?

[mikec_pt]

When you created the Jail did you follow advice from other posts here, or are you doing it “blindly”?

The plug-in does everything you need, but if your doing your own setup things might not work for. multiple reasons. Plex doesn’t actually offer paid support, but the setup is also not very common and so the community might find it difficult to help out.

It’s FreeBSD and Jails… you choose the hardest route

However I use the same setup so maybe I might be able to help.

let’s start with the basics… Does your Jail have vnet enabled?

I’m assuming the issue here is plex is not getting the codecs required for transcode/DirectStream which hints to either permessions or network issues… so vnet being off seems like the possible cause.

[orcanum]

I have almost the same situation. FreeBSD 13.0, Plex 1.24.1.4931 (last from ports). One Plex server in base system works fine, and other Plex server in Jail behaves the same as in your post. Stuck on transcoding but in logs all fine.