PMS unavailable unless remote acess is enabled

[M-Y-S]

Good evening,

Tired to avoid writing this post for as long as possible but I feel I have exhausted all my options.

Problem -

Plex player on Apple TV can see my PMS (running on Mac Mini) but it lists the server as remote despite it being local. Futher to that once we link the apple TV. The player cannot see any of the content unless remote access is enabled.

The libraries are visible but a clear ‘No content’ message is displayed on the screen. When remote access is enabled. Access to library becomes available although is extraordinarily slow as it is going outbound. The server and client sit on different sub nets on the LAN however the client can actively see and browse the content from another local PMS, which is very strange.

I have tried everything but nothing seems to be working for me now.
Reinstalled PMS and the the network configurations are the same on both of my PMS’s. One isnt accessible and one is.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[tom80H]

Plex considers different subnets as different networks (kind of).
You can bypass this by configuring Plex to recognize that other subnet to be part of your LAN. This is a Plex Pass feature (which should be no issue for you)…
From https://support.plex.tv/articles/200430283-network/

LAN Networks

Very few people will need to set or change this preference. It simply lets you specify which IP addresses or networks will be considered to be “local” to you. If you set any bandwidth limits under Remote Access, those do not apply to “local” playback and only take effect for remote playback. By default, only the network subnet on which the server is located is considered to be “local” (which is appropriate for the vast majority of users).

Tip! : This feature requires an active Plex Pass subscription for the Plex Media Server admin Plex account. Addresses can be specified either as an individual IP address or a range (using IP/netmasks). Do not include spaces or tabs.

Related Page : Server Settings - Bandwidth and Transcoding Limits

[M-Y-S]

Further information -

Apple TV - 10.61.104.78
PMS 1 - 10.61.98.105:32400 - Mac Mini (Unaccessible)
PMS 2 - 10.61.98.100:32400 - Synology (Fully accessible)

the two subnets (.104 & .98) have no restrictions communicating on our LAN and both PMS netwrok settings are exactly the same including secure connection settings, and allowed IP ranges etc.

Really struggling with this one

Thanks again in advance

[M-Y-S]

Hi Tom,

Didn’t see your reply there. I have added this configuration but having no luck at all (see below)

Problem persists

[pshanew]

Unless something has changed very recently, you cannot have any spaces in the list of IP addresses/networks under LAN Networks. If you do, it will cause a parsing error and the entries will not be recognized. It may not resolve your issue, but if you’re going to use the LAN Networks setting, I’d recommend losing the space(s).

[M-Y-S]

Appreciative that but unfortunately has not solved the problem.

Attached most recent log file.

Plex Media Server.log (802.8 KB)

[M-Y-S]

Upon trying to connect the apple TV with the server (for the 4th time - remove plex and re-link) The server still appears as remote but then immediately becomes unavailable.

No access at all

[tom80H]

You might want to double-check that input:

May 01, 2020 16:00:44.668 [0x70000846e000] ERROR - Error parsing allowedNetworks ' 10.61.104.0255.255.255.0': Invalid argument

Not sure if there’s still a leading space in the text field that isn’t trimmed?!

Edit: ignore… I should have kept going on reading that log before posting.
Could you try restarting the Plex Media Server and the client on your Apple TV and provide the logs from both devices afterwards?

[M-Y-S]

Did as required but the apple TV log looks extremely un-useful ?
Text on it not encoded properly it seems

Plex Media Server.log (88.1 KB)

logging(1).txt (31.9 KB)

[M-Y-S]

Tried re-encoding the text file by the way but cant make any readable English out of it

[M-Y-S]

Re-attemped and gathered the logs properly. see below

logging 2.zip (53.3 KB)

[pshanew]

Are you positive you have rules in-place to allow traffic from 10.61.104.78 to 10.61.98.x on TCP port 32400? I ask because it appears to resolve the IP address correctly in DNS, but times out attempting to connect to it. From your logs:

2020/05/01 16:26:12.303 (65 MB) (14850) 🔧 PMKConnectionManager.m:925 | Unable to connect to standard server OWNER-PMS (hasPresence) - e3fe96fcea64ad42a9e6dc1670163acba5245551 using <PMKPlexServerConnection: 0x281beb8e0>[ https://10-61-98-105.REDACTED.plex.direct:32400 - 10.61.98.105:32400 (plex,published,direct) ]: Timed out
    "<PMKPlexServerConnection: 0x281beb8e0>[ https://10-61-98-105.REDACTED.plex.direct:32400 - 10.61.98.105:32400 (plex,published,direct) ]",
    "<PMKPlexServerConnection: 0x281befcf0>[ https://10-61-98-105.REDACTED.plex.direct:32400 - 10-61-98-105.REDACTED.plex.direct:32400 (plex,published,direct) ]"

I performed a quick test here, placing my Apple TV 4K on my IoT network. By default, I don’t allow any traffic to originate from my IoT network to my default LAN. As expected, the ATV failed to connect directly to Plex Media Server running on my Mac. When I created a rule to allow access to TCP 32400 on my LAN from my IoT network, it was able to connect normally.

[M-Y-S]

Thank you very much for looking into that. Appreciate it.

Going to do some more investigating but have checked over everything and cant see anything that would cause this.

Seeing it timeout like that in the logs couldn’t be any clearer though. Going to go back to the drawing board on this one network wise and take it from there

[M-Y-S]

To all those interested. Thanks to the above help and guidance and utilizing the log data, I was able to pin point the problem.

Double checked the access control lists between subnets on my network and had to allow access from 104.x to 98.105 specifically.

Job done

Thanks to all who helped

Appreciated