PMS disappears when trying to claim it

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Server Version: 1.13.5.5332
OS: Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04

Hi,

so I upgraded to the newest PMS version today (from 1.13.0 to 1.13.5) and after the upgrade, I was unable to find my server. Even trying to find it locally (via SSH tunnel, it’s remote VPS) did not work. The service is definitely running, confirmed with sudo systemctl status plexmediaserver.service.
I stopped the service, removed the PlexOnlineToken, PlexOnlineUsername, PlexOnlineMail and PlexOnlineHome attributes from Preferences.xml, removed all cookies for localhost and plex.tv and started the service again. Voilà, I saw my server. But now comes the weird part: every time I try to claim it, the server disappears again. I am not able to find it anywhere, neither with nor without SSL, neither via app.plex.tv nor via localhost. I only see it after following the previously mentioned steps again. So when I try to claim the server, the four attributes are again added to Preferences.xml, but I only see the server after deleting them again, effectively giving me no way of claiming my server.
Things I’ve tried: deleting Preferences.xml entirely, disabling ufw, rebooting, re-installing PMS, I even upgraded to Ubuntu 18.04 now, but nothing works. It’s always the same dilemma.

Maybe one of you can see something in the logs or has any other idea?

Plex Media Server.zip (15.2 KB)

EDIT: Just to rule out problems with my VPS provider, I just installed a test environment on a second server I have with the same provider, and claiming that one was not a problem.

2

You can forcibly force it back to ‘first-run’ status (soft reset)

Via the SSH-tunnel ssh -L 8888.127.0.0.1:32400 ip.addr.of.host

  1. Stop PMS
  2. rename /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Preferences.xml to Preferences.xml.old` for safe keeping.
  3. Restart Plex
  4. Now it will greet you with the sign-in and “Got it” pages. in a http://127.0.0.1:8888/web tab (in an incognito tab if needed)
  5. As you proceed through setup, DO NOT create new library sections, they have been retained.
  6. When you finally arrive at the Dashboard, go back into Settings - Server and put back those which were reset.
3

That is exactly what I did when I said that I deleted the Preferences.xml. Doesn’t solve the problem, same behavior as before. :expressionless:

EDIT: I was just able to finally resolve this issue myself, though I still don’t understand what the root of the issue was. The value PublishServerOnPlexOnlineKey in Preferences.xml was always set to 0, so I changed it to 1 and that did the trick. Simple as that. Why would Plex not do this on its own, when I claim the server? I assume that would be the normal behavior.

4

It does set the value the moment you sign in.
Permissions on Preferences.xml were mucked up somehow? Not likely but possible.

1 Like
5

No, permissions definitely were not a problem, the other four attributes were written to the file at the time of login, so Plex definitely had write permission to that file.

6

when you claim the host, it gets added to your Devices list.
Is it possible you have another (older) instance of that Friendly Name obscuring the current one? (i.e. Duplicate name)

7

No, I deleted all previous instances of PMS from my Devices list.

8

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