Serious mess up.. Plex Server says "No Soup for you"

[OnlyKingJoe]

Server Version#: 1.19.2
NAS: Qnap TS 251+

Hey guys, So I am in a big mess. Everything was working fine until the other day. In hindsight, I think it was when I changed routers to a BT Smart Hub 2 which I did last week. At the same time, I also plugged a switch into the router to give me more ports, and the NAS is plugged into the switch. Maybe that’s important info, maybe not.

I will try to tell this story in a simplified timeline as I have fiddled with so much now, making things worse or better I don’t know.

1. First noticed an issue last week when I couldn’t play movies on Apple TV. It popped up an error. I could, however, play movies on my phone and then cast it to Plex.

2. I then noticed new movies weren’t getting the front covers or synopsis. Wierd because they were obviously being added and the Apple TV player was communicating with the media server - I just couldn’t play them without casting, and they weren’t grabbing front covers etc

3. This Prompted me to fix it, so I logged into my Qnap NAS and from there opened Plex Media server. It opened, and showed all the Plex content, but it just said couldn’t connect to the Qnap Server

4. I deleted the QNAP device from the plex trusted device list. But then whenever opening the media server from QNAP it would just go to a connected failed page instantly.

5. Weirdly, throughout this, i could still use plex on my iPhone. Bizzare. Anyway, I tinckered everywhere… cant remember all the things i did, but the fix for that new problem was logging into the NAS, installing a browser app, going to localhost:32400/web from that browser and then it prompted me to log in and all that stuff. And then asked me to “claim” the server. Which i did.

6. This is now where i am up to. I can open the Plex media server from my NAS once again, but the QNAP server is displayed as not connected and says “No soup for you”

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I am totally out of ideas… I’ve tried disabling the router firewall. UPnP is on. I tried adding a port forward, although I’m probably doing it wrong and that shouldn’t be stopping me from connecting anyway as that is just for remote access, from memory.

Sorry, this is such a mess, but hopefully, someone can work out what’s happened and can tell me what to do without having to remove the Plex database and start from scratch as that would suck!

Additional note: When I browse to the Plex web app, it says under the server “Unable to connect to Qnap server securely”
Screenshot 2020-04-21 at 12.36.39|690x878

Second note: Urgh, have i made this worse. I thought maybe the “server claim” might not have worked as I see people saying it wont be secure until it is claimed. I also remember when claiming it, it did bug out and i needed to reset the browser. So i thought I would redo the claim I did yesterday - i deleted the NAS trusted device form PLex. Logged into the NAS browser, went to localhost:32400/web just like yesterday, logged in. But at this stage it gives me no options to claim the server. I am so sure this is exactly what i did yesterday. So now, i have no server at all… if i go to “your media” on the left, it just tells me to download a media software

[ChuckPa]

It sounds like your local LAN addresses have changed (modem/routers are notorious for doing that without telling you )

First step is to verify the network IP address settings of the QNAP

Make certain it’s using the correct IP address to talk to the BT router for both
gateway and DNS.

The switch won’t change anything except give you more ports; that’s their purpose.

[OnlyKingJoe]

Thanks for the tip.

I am not entirely sure what you are asking me to do… but here is a screenshot of the network settings in my QNAP:

That is the correct IP for the Qnap. (Going to 192.168.1.12 goes to the NAS)

That is also the correct default gateway IP also. (Going to 192.168.1.254 opens up the router)

As for the DNS.. my QNAP is customised to 8.8.8.8 and 4.4.4.4.

The DNS on my router, I think this is the area you want:

Hopefully, you can make sense of the info i have supplied and pick up on any mistakes… but if you ask me to change the DNS on the router to match 8.8.8.8 and 4.4.4.4 - i don’t think my router gives me that option. It gives me a dynamic DNS option to enable if i choose, but i don’t think that’s it as it requires a username and password for a dns service.

[OnlyKingJoe]

Okay… so the update on this. I found myself in a loop of not being able to claim the server. Removing the server as a trusted device would sometimes put me in a scenario where the server would almost be lost. I never got the option to claim it again. However, a mixture of restarting the plex service, logging out and in and visiting localhost:32400/web on the QNAP itself would fix this and allow me to get a claim option again.

The next issue, the reason i opened up this post, seemed to be entirely related to security / certificate stuff. The fix… head slappingly simple… my server somehow had the wrong time set - it was off by a couple of hours. I just set it to automatically sync the time and instantly, everything started to work again.

Hopefully this post will help people in similar situations. And on the note of helping others, here are some other fixes people had for similar issues:

On my research, i also found out that a virus scanner can cause similar issues (disabling the virus scanner can fix it) and also somebody else said he had to connect wirelessly from the server to the router to automatically obtain an “internal ip” and then he could go back to wired and it worked.