Random loss of remote - hundreds of pubsub async errors

@sa2000 - Is there another way to monitor my remote access consistently without me actually having to attempt connection?
If not, there lies a problem.
During the time most of the remote connectivity goes down, I’m at work or asleep. (starts 3-6am, ends 2-4pm, EST, as mentioned in PM)
When at work, I only use my (limited) cell data to attempt access when I’m told by Tautulli that it’s down. And during those down times, several but not all the time, I have to use ‘reconnect’ on Android Plex or refresh on a Mac web browser on a comcast line) to re-establish connection.

@SwiftPanda16 - perhaps better in PM, but might be good for all who are monitoring this thread - where in Tautulli .py files can I change the time interval for remote access from 1 minute to 5?
I’d imagine doing - shut Tautulli down, edit from 60 to 300, start tautulli back up.

Change it to 60 minutes - this was the interval that it was decided Plex media server operates at for periodic checks

And hopefully the time does not clash with Plex media server own checks

Or run without Tautulli for a few days

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Thank you @SwiftPanda16

@JamminR just to explain where i am coming from on this

There may be bugs in the code in Plex Media Server / plex.tv that are sitting there dormant and would have a reduced impact because they need some specific circumstance for them to cause an issue to users. For example a bug in how we handle connectivity check failures that may arise because a Plex Media Server database is being optimized at the time (there was one at 03:15 am).

Exercising the code where the bug is, every minute of every day is likely to hit this bug and suddenly a low impacting rare bug becomes a real big issue

This is what i need to establish

@SwiftPanda16 - Thanks. I’ll likely edit mine to 15 or 20 minutes.
I know an hour has been requested, but that’s just too infrequent imo.

@sa2000
One hour is too long, and as an IT geek, I understand perfectly why you ask.
It’s a huge ask for all I rely on Tautulli for though - tons of features that should, in my opinion and many others opinions, have been baked into Plex to begin with.
As a server administrator sharing with 20 family and friends, with an average of 2-3 different ones active daily, of about 6 of the 20 that might actually use it once every two weeks, having nothing to tell me that there is a problem other than them emailing me isn’t a good ask.
Besides monitoring, I also use Tautulli to control one of my shared users who shared with a distant cousin. If any tries to exceed more than 2 streams, Tautulli kills the 3rd.
Additionally, some browsers and clients seem to not tell Plex they’ve stopped if the browser is closed, instead doing a long term ‘pause’. Tautulli ends any paused stream longer than 30 minutes for me.

And last, but not least, when I’m remote, I can use Tautulli to restart PMS, and if needed, the actual OS it resides on, if/when if I decide I need to do either. I simply have Tautulli run a ‘test’ script.

Asking me to not run Tautulli is understandable, but extremely difficult for me to do since I not only rely on it to tell me when I can’t reach my server, but I often use it to restart the server when it’s having troubles. (On top of the monitoring that I’d miss - I’d have to not run it for at least a month to determine if it was a contributing cause of the issue since this seems to happen so randomly/every few weeks)

I’ve had a similar issue following the plex server update that took place just within the last two days. i’m now unable to connect remotely whatsoever and for some reason plex defaults to port 0 in the public ip on on the remote access panel (setting it to 32400 or another open port doesn’t work). Streaming music on android (non-local) only works for about 10 seconds and then it cuts off until an app restart. It was literally working fine yesterday and I haven’t changed a thing in the router or computer. Is there a log file I can provide to plex?

See
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201643703-reporting-issues-with-plex-media-server/
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250417-plex-media-server-log-files/

The logs need to cover the time the remote access is lost

Though I’m happy if others issues can be resolved, @tothlbd has a different issue than mine. My port is not getting set to 0, and I’ve been noticing this for 2-3 months.

Thanks for the response but it fixed itself it seems, all working okay after a second reboot.

In the same boat as @JamminR here. I understand Plex’s distaste with the frequency of checks by Tautulli. If we can figure out and fix the underlying bug by letting Tautulli invoke the issue over and over , I think it’s completely understandable for that check to be moved out to 10-15 minutes.

Having said that however, nothing stops someone from issuing the same check every 2 seconds. If Plex needs that check to only ever be done at most once every 30-60 minutes, then some defensive coding will have to be done as part of that check.

Just wanted to be sure there isn’t misplaced anger towards Tautulli because of this.

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I would consider that a DDOS attack

I am going to repeat what i have already said

There may be bugs in the code in Plex Media Server / plex.tv that are sitting there dormant and would have a reduced impact because they need some specific circumstance for them to cause an issue to users.

Exercising the code where the bug is, every minute of every day is likely to hit this bug and suddenly a low impacting rare bug becomes a real big issue

Again, I understand your point. But you’ve got to know people will take advantage of stuff like that. Tautulli or not.

If that’s what’s really causing the issue here, then I’ll celebrate the Plex release that addresses it.

I’m glad we caught this and can help you and your team address.

Please see my recent comment on this other same-issue thread: Plex Constantly Loses Remote Access

It may or may not help with the underlying issue. I am also glad we are all trying to get to the bottom of this. a community approach. cheers

Question: Is this an issue if Tautulli is not configured to monitor PMS’ remote access?

Good question.
I’m more willing to test that as a ‘next step’ than not running Tautulli. (That is, disable the option ‘monitor remote access’)
For now, I’ve modified \Tautulli\plexpy\_init_.py - line 409 - to monitor remote access every 12 minutes (5 times an hour) instead of every 60 seconds.

If it is not configured to do that, then I would not expect to receive the repeated connectivity test requests - so that would be a simple change to make to establish if your issue is anything to do with this or something else

I never had monitoring of remote access enabled in Tautulli and am (was?) getting the same error in my logs:

Jul 11, 2018 21:28:12.954 [0x7fe9b43ff700] WARN - PubSub: Received notifyConnectivity event with incorrect async identifier (bb06cc87-e04f-4a94-99b4-0f03e87d1719, expected 93c38372-10b0-4db4-a170-8343db19b6d1)
Jul 11, 2018 21:37:37.225 [0x7fe9b3bfe700] WARN - PubSub: Received notifyConnectivity event with incorrect async identifier (23ae6534-3092-4e6d-8dee-34b8fcfe4e18, expected c27caa95-e88c-4797-af78-a3511c5d9e40)

Dont know if this helps…

That has been reported in logs for over a year and was not and also at this moment, is not considered as having a harmful effect. It is responsible for the remote access status in Plex Web being inaccurate, however, it is not known - at this point in time - to be responsible for remote access not working

@sa2000 - @SwiftPanda16
I’m now in an up/down notification loop again it seems.
This is with a manually edited monitoring interval of 12 minutes (instead of every 1).
Currently, as of this minute, Tautulli reports ‘down’, and, using plex.tv/web, I get no ‘unreachable’ error, BUT, using Apple IOS and Android, both report the “indirect connection - check network settings” error.
Current logs attached.
PlexLogs.zip (1.0 MB)

canyouseeme.org shows my external port open, even during the down time.

I know you’ve asked to not run Tautulli, or disable monitoring - the first, I’m not going to do.
The second, I’d need to know a way to be notified of remote access issues because I don’t have the ability to manually monitor my server 24/7. Right now, Tautulli is the only app I know with Plex that would let me know I’m even having this issue.