Issue: I used to run Plex sever on a Synology server. The server was struggling to transcode so I moved the server to a Windows 10 machine. It ran perfectly fine but I didn’t like the fact that it would not start unless you were home to log onto Windows so I moved it to my Fedora linux server. Each migration went perfect and it ran on Fedora flawlessly until 2 weeks ago. I continued to use the Synology as the host for my content and ran Plex Server from the Fedora linux server.
A friend called me and told me he could not reach my server. When I logged into my account, I saw that everything was in French and my friends list was gone. The Plex server on Fedora would not function correctly. I shut the server down and started Plex server on my Windows desktop and it would not run and could not be accessed. I then tried running Plex from the Synology and I get the same issue.
Odd thing is that even though I cannot see my friend’s list, one of my friends could play content from my server while running on my Windows desktop. So he could see me, yet I cannot see nor access my friend’s list. I confirmed this with 2 other friends. I visit https://plex.tv/pms/users and the only thing my browser returns is the following xml even though I am logged in…
<errors><error>Please sign in.</error></errors>
Today, I received an email from Plex saying something about a friend conrfmation in French. I logged into my account and everything is set back to French.
I am beginning to think this is not a server issue, even though I am having issues with all 3 of my servers. I’m led to believe my Plex account was hacked.
Before I do anything else drastic, such as delete my account and start over since I do have the Plex subscription, I would like some advice on what to look at to debugged what is really going on here? I have looked at the logs but I’m not sure which log I should be looking in or what I should really be looking for. My server and/or account has been down for 2 weeks now and I’d really like to get back up and running.
I did not change my email used with the account.
I certainly didn’t change the language from English to French (though I did take French in high school and could barely remember enough to read French properly).
I changed my password to something a lot more secure a week ago and the language was changed back to French today…
I can log into my account on plex.tv but it cannot find any of my servers nor my friends list. I would understand if netwrok issues were preventing it from seeing my servers, but my plex account should be independent and stored on Plex’s servers, yet I cannot see anything in my account.
So I’m home this weekend and have the whole time to fix this issue but I have no idea where to look next. I have 4 different computers in the house with PMS installed and none of them are running correctly. I find it unlikely that all four got corrupted somehow. I’m still convinced that my account was corrupted and I’m thinking about starting over with a new account unless anyone has any ideas on what to look at next?
Everything was in French when I logged into my account. Nothing is in French again at this time. When the issue first occurred, everything was in French. After I switched it back to English and changed my password to something more secure, it got switched back to French a couple days later. I switched it back and its been in English since.
I still can’t see my friends list and any of my PMS refuse to be claimed on my account. Regardless of the state of my own servers, whether they are shut down, corrupted or crashed, I should still be able to log into my account from any computer or Roku or Samsung TV, etc and see my friend’s servers and watch/listen to their content. This is why I believe my account got corrupted somehow. Just looking for a 2nd opinion if I’m on the right track and how to fix it.
Looking at your account you have no friends/shares. If your server was removed from your account or claimed by some other account or it’s token invalidated here is info on how to clear out that info which should make it able to be claimed by your account. On linux it will be in the preferences.xml file
I followed the instructions to reset the preferences.xml. It did not help. My server was visible for a minute, but it said it was unclaimed. I hit Claim server and everything disappeared and nothing is visible nor accessible. If I reboot my server, the same thing will happen. My content will be visible and once I try to claim the server on my account, everything disappears.
Are there any logs that would help I can grab?
Also, what happened to my friend’s list? I had 20 people on my list and they just disappeared.
Update: Rebooted twice. I have to claim the server in order to sign in, but I cannot claim it. Every time I do, everything related to the server disappears, so I cannot setup outside network access.
Update2: Even though I cannot see anything related to my server in the browser and the settings, it is running. I can play my content in the house, either from the Plex App on Windows 10 and from my Roku device downstairs. So PMS is running and accessible from other devices in my house, but not through any settings screen in the browser or being able to claim it on my account.
Latest Update: Since I was having issues with Plex, I finally took this opportunity to switch from Fedora to Ubuntu. I like Fedora but it goes through way too many updates for a server I like to leave alone for months at a time.
So I wiped my server and installed Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. I had stupid issues trying to get the mounts configured properly but its all good.
I tried to migrate my old Plex install from my previous machine so I didn’t have to reconfigure everything, but it did not want to work in any way shape or form. So I decided to just install Plex fresh, plus it gave me a chance to reorganize my content a bit. So now I have a good running install of Plex on Ubuntu. I’m still going to spend the week finishing all my libraries and confirm everything is running right.
This still does not answer the question on how I lost my friends list? If it was related to my install on my Fedora server, I wiped everything including any Plex logs that may have provided a clue.
It’s not critical at all and I’ll take this as another opportunity to weed a few people off my friends lists!
I’m hoping to like running Plex on Ubuntu much better, though I can already tell I hate the fact Ubuntu does not give you root access. That is very annoying and a topic for proper linux forums.
The share’s list is maintained as part of the server UUID. This is how Plex tracks everything.
If you lose that UUID. which is stored in Preferences.xml then the shares list is also gone (inaccessible)
It is my personal experience that Fedora 29 & 30 are unstable. The recent ownership changes (IBM) show a marked decrease in its stability. It is for this plus other reasons, I remain at Fedora 28. I do all production work on 28. When it finally freezes all updates, I will consider another distro if I need to update but will not do so without legitimate need.
…and I have just been blindly updating Fedora over the years everytime a new version is pushed out. Ubuntu should be a better distro for my purpose of running Plex.
Is there a way to back up the UUID so I can restore it if my friend’s list is lost again? Is backing up the Preferences.xml all that’s needed? If my previous install overwrote or lost my UUID, can a backup be restored?
Question… Since I still have my old backups when I went from Synology -> Windows -> Fedora, I still have my old Preferences.xml with my previous UUID. Can I just edit my current Preferences.xml with my previous UUID and restore my lost friends list? Just asking before I break something.
