PlexConnect just stopped working

Dev Community Apps & Creations
1

I’ve had PlexConnect working fairly well for years on my home network, with multiple Apple TV’s using the trailer app to access it. About a week ago we had a major power outage. Wreaked havoc on my home network, which took me a while to sort out and get fixed, including a call to ATT who came out and replaced my router. I restored all settings on the router, including the NAT entry to allow Plex access to the server, and I can access my Plex Server from my phone just fine.

But PlexConnect won’t work anymore. The trailer app just shows Apple trailers. I put a sniffer on the network, tested a bunch of things, and as far as I can tell the PlexConnect server, which has always worked fine, no longer translates names well and, in particular, does not redirect the trailers.apple.com name back to itself (the Plex Server).

It’s a simple home network, one subnet (192.168.1.x), with .254 as the router and .50 as the static address of the plex connect/Plex Server. When I start PlexConnect I get the following messages, which to me all look normal:

15:02:39 PILBackgrounds: No PIL/Pillow installation found
15:02:39 PlexConnect: ***
15:02:39 PlexConnect: Press CTRL-C to shut down
15:02:39 PlexConnect: ***
15:02:39 PlexConnect: started: 15:02:39
15:02:39 PlexConnect: Version: 0.4-Deb
15:02:39 PlexConnect: Python: 2.7.8 (default, Jun 30 2014, 16:03:49) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)]
15:02:39 PlexConnect: Host OS: win32
15:02:39 PlexConnect: IP_self: 192.168.1.50
15:02:39 PILBackgrounds: No PIL/Pillow installation found
15:02:39 PILBackgrounds: No PIL/Pillow installation found
15:02:39 DNSServer: started 15:02:39
15:02:39 DNSServer: ***
15:02:39 DNSServer: DNSServer: Serving DNS on 192.168.1.50 port 53
15:02:39 DNSServer: intercept: [‘trailers.apple.com’] => 192.168.1.50
15:02:39 DNSServer: restrain: [‘mesu.apple.com’, ‘appldnld.apple.com’, ‘appldnld.apple.com.edgesuite.net’] => 127.0.0.1
15:02:39 DNSServer: forward other to higher level DNS: 8.8.8.8
15:02:39 DNSServer: ***
15:02:39 PILBackgrounds: No PIL/Pillow installation found
15:02:39: WebServer: started: 15:02:39
15:02:39: WebServer: ***
15:02:39: WebServer: WebServer: Serving HTTP on 192.168.1.50 port 80
15:02:39: WebServer: ***
15:02:39: PILBackgrounds: No PIL/Pillow installation found
15:02:39: WebServer: started 15:02:39
15:02:39: WebServer: ***
15:02:39: WebServer: WebServer: Serving HTTPS on 192.168.1.50 port 443
15:02:39: WebServer: ***

A couple things:

  • I know it’s an older installation, but when something works I don’t tend to screw with it. :). And this worked fine until a week ago.

  • The PlexConnect DNS Server is definitely wonky, because when it does translate names it seems to be using the local router 192.168.1.254 instead of 8.8.8.8. I know this because when the router isn’t translating names correctly it passes its own address back to all requests, and that happened when the router wasn’t working properly and I tried to translate names through the PlexConnect server

  • when the network is mostly working fine, meaning the router is good and the Plex Server is up and can be hit from my phone client, attempts to use the PlexConnect server as a dns server (e.g. using nslookup from a windows system with server set to 192.168.1.50) translate names fine, except that trailers.apple.com translates as the real trailers address at Apple. PlexConnect isn’t redirecting it to the Plex server.

Any ideas? I know a fair amount about networking, can’t get the PlexConnect server back to where it was just a week ago…

2

Regarding your ATV:

  1. If it has DNS automatic, it will show Apple’s trailers
  2. If you setup DNS to 192.168.1.50 it will contact contact PlexConnect, and one of two things will happen:
    a) If certificates are not correctly loaded (or have expired) it will give you an error (can’t access trailers)
    b) It certificates are Ok the DNS portion of PlexConnect will process the request

We need logs with loglevel=High and your Settings.cfg file.

Don’t be afraid of upgrading to the latest PlexConnect version, you can always revert to your old version if needed.

3

I’ll post the logs, but the dns server is set to manual on the Apple TV and points to .50, but the trailers app still just goes to apple trailers. That’s what I was saying, that as a test if I use .50 as a name server in nslookup, it’s feeding back trailers.apple.com as the actual apple address instead of as itself, even though the PlexConnect startup says it’s intercepting.

4

Haven’t had a chance to pull the logs, but it occurred to me that I installed a dhcp server on the box, to make up for a problem I was having with AT&T. Could that be interfering? The Apple Tv’s are still hardcoded to use it as their name server, but it’s the only thing that’s changed in a long while, and the server has worked well for years until the last week or so.

5

A DNS server would interfere, but I think that DHCP server would not. Anyway you can probably disable that DHCP server to test (you would need fixed IP on ATV’s and PMS).

6

(sigh) That was it. DHCP Server came in with a default dns server. When I turned that off, PlexConnect went back to working fine. Thanks much for the help. :slight_smile:

7

Thanks for reporting back. Happy plexing :slight_smile: