Suddenly getting a "unrecognized domain" error?

General Discussions
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Server Version#: 1.16.0.1226
Player Version#: Any and all it seems.

So this has been rather strange …I have been running my Plex Media Server for over a year. Now and then things go wrong and they are usually pretty easy to figure out… a system upgrade caused some problem for example.

This however is a little strange and I’m inclined to think that my last system upgrade caused something that was broken for a very long time to suddenly work.

Anyway, here’s what happened…

After a year of running my server I couldn’t access it over my local network so I looked at the logs and this is the line that stands out:

Jun 18, 2019 23:51:22.067 [0x7f6a06958700] DEBUG - Request came in with unrecognized domain / IP ‘www.plex’ in header Host; treating as non-local

First the domain is www.plex.local not just www.plex . Second I have been using this domain without a problem for the most part of a year. This happened before I upgraded to 1.16… and happened to a version that worked fine for quite some time.

The www.plex.local comes from my Apache server running on the same computer and it automatically adds the 32400 port to the URL if it’s not there… very convenient.

This means it’s not the HOSTNAME or FQDN or such, just an alias that Apache manages like it does for my many virtual hosts on this computer (my workstation and plex media server - I’m a software developer so having many virtual domains is just part of what I do, no big deal).

www.plex.local and plex.local are in my /etc/hosts file.

So seeing this error I looked at my /etc/HOSTNAME file and the name is just “quark” so I tried it just to see and entered http://quark:32400/ and sure enough I was connected locally.

So, the questions are after a year of working just fine is why:

  • is www.plex.local not working?
  • is www.plex.local showing as www.plex in the log. I.e.: where did the .local go? …odds are the answer to this will solve the former question.
  • and, most importantly, how do I fix this so it works as before?

Even a hint at where to look would be of help. In the meantime I’m going to read around about my last system upgrade and see if there is some mention of .local being removed from local URLs all of a sudden but I just cant imagine how that can be… but it’s the most logical reason I can think of right now… hopefully someone in the know can steer me in a better direction.

In case it matters, my OS is openSUSE 15.0 …I should probably move to Ubuntu since most people seem to know it but I’ve come to know openSUSE and being a computer for work learning new systems is something I avoid if what I have is (mostly) working well.

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UPDATE:

I tried the server IP address which didn’t work before, i.e. http://192.168…:32400 and now that is working so then I tried the domain that wasn’t working www.plex.local and now that works.

So… I have no idea. Clearly accessing it with the HOSTNAME (quark) fixed something but the question now is, is it temporary?

Is there a place where you can tell Plex Media Server that “XXXXX.local” domain is just a valid as the HOSTNAME or FQDN so this doesn’t happen in the future (barring unavoidable bugs)???

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UPDATE 2:

All the above was on the same computer. That is, my browser accessing Plex Media Server (PMS) was on the same computer as PMS. When I opened up my laptop it also was now accessing PMS. However, my Roku was stubbornly not working with Plex. When signed out and back in it curiously showed that Plex was not the only server but there was also a Quark. Quark was available but “Plex on Quark” was not.

So going to where you give your PMS an alias I saw that “Plex on Quark” was gone and was replaced by Quark. Ah hah!. Things are starting to come together. I don’t want my plex server the same name as my computer’s hostname so I reinstated its alias as “Plex on Quark”. Now Roku shows two “Plex on Quark” options, one available and one not available.

Anyway the bottom line is that I selected the “available” one and now it works fine.

So the best I can discern is that somehow the alias I set for my PMS got forgotten and it caused all the problems.

However, that still doesn’t address the server log showing just www.plex and the .local missing from the domain nor why my alias “Plex on Quark” got forgotten.

Unless someone has some insight this might be a mystery forever as I have no clues at all.

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Plex doesn’t use Apache. Whatever you configure there doesn’t affect Plex.

I don’t recommend to use a custom domain at all.
Either use the local IP address or (better) just load app.plex.tv in your web browser.

The reason is ‘secure connections’.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/206225077-how-to-use-secure-server-connections/
With a custom domain/host name, you’d need to supply your own, trusted cryptographic certificates.

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This in Apache makes it nicer to use Plex:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}    ^(?:www\.)?plex\.local [NC]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT}  !^32400$
RewriteRule ^/?(.*)$        http://www.plex.local:32400/$1 [L,R,NE]

Although technically Plex doesn’t require Apache Apache can make things a little nicer.

I do have my own certs setup. I should look to see if they are expired but I doubt it.

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