Some time ago I followed step by step procedures to setup a plex media server on my openmediaserver media server, and for a while it worked alright.
But then things started getting funky, and typically it would go down every Sunday evening, and I’d have to get out of bed and figure out how to login to the portainer console and restart some processes, until it would work again.
Now at this point - my plex account shows NOTHING!
NO SERVER!
NOTHING!
Not sure why it doesn’t see the server. The server is up. I bring up the portainer console, everything is in there, all the configurations match what I find on a similar guide online. I follow a link to login to my server, and it brings me back to my plex page, but no server or media shows up, and no options to add anything!
There is NOTHING intiutive here at all, I’m not sure how you expect anyone to figure out how to do a damn thing.
Mind you, I work tech support for a living, I do this stuff all the time…but I can’t find a single redeeming quality for using plex at this point, with how damn impossible you’ve designed it to use, and how it can’t work stable for more than a few days!
Not to mention, every attempt to reach out for help is met with deleting and non response!
For the love of god - how do I get my server to show up on my damn plex page again!?!?!?!?!?!??
Distribution? Of what? I’m trying to get my openmediavault server to show up in my plex account.
Don’t understand at all what you’re asking. I have a physical server, on my network, with openmediavault, with which I used portainer to configure a plex server following step by step instructions, which worked at first, but doens’t. I’ve already said all of this. No VMs involved here. Container is a term that is used in setting up the open media vault stuff, but it is on a machine. I need more clear and specific questions, I’m happy to give as many details as is needed, but understand that I need to understand the questions.
Since you mentioned Portainer your post belongs in the server-docker forum. Some hints for you here anyway:
The number one most frequent source of problems with Plex is permissions and ownership of files and folders being inconsistent with the user the server process runs as.
A major source of problems with applications running in dockers is that the container must be running as a user that can access the files and folders the application needs to function. Again, it’s a permissions and ownership thing. This is further complicated by the need to have the correct bind mounts specified in the container configuration.
Permissions haven’t changed at all on anything, and that’s one of the few things I can check, no problems there.
It used to be when I would go into my plex account, I would see the name of my server there, and my content under tv shows, movies, music. I don’t see any of that, I don’t see any option to add any content, I don’t see any option to add a server, my server isn’t showing up anywhere…how in the heck do I add anything? Or find anything?
If this is in the wrong category, then please, by all means, move this to the correct category.
In addition to the other suggestions, can you share which step-by-step instructions you followed? Seeing those may help others in diagnosing what’s going wrong. In particular, Docker containers support multiple types of network driver types, the choice of which informs other configuration decisions.
But I cannot guarantee this is the exact same process I followed. At the very least, it’s similar.
As I poked around in my plex account, I tried to find a way to add my server back in. Mind you, I am logged into plex through my server, and yet, I still can’t see my server. Figure that one out. When I go to add content, it gives me the option to download a server install, not add a server. Not sure how that’s supposed to make any sense. The best I got was for it to show me all devices authorized in plex - the name of my server showed up twice. I removed both, hoping that would then allow me to re-add it. But, now that I removed those 2 server devices, there’s no option or method to re-add it. So now I’m still stuck, but even more stuck.
Maybe you could post to a link on properly claiming a server? If not for me, for other people that stumble on this thread at some point - there’s few things I hate more than a forum thread for a problem I’m having that is resolved without a posted answer. The internet is too cluttered with garbage that no one wants to clean up.
I’m not finding anything relevant to my situation when searching on this. Sounds like something needs to be reset/redone - but there’s no obvious place or setting that lets me undo the claim, so I can reclaim.
This support article describes how to regain access to server settings when it has been lost:
However, it doesn’t specifically address Docker containers created by Portainer. It’s important because you need to know where your Preferences.xml file is in order to complete the steps provided.
Somewhere in your container configuration you will have specified a binding for Plex’s /config directory. Find that path and then navigate to it on your file system; then navigate to “Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/” from there. You should have a file named “Preferences.xml” in that directory. Complete the steps in the article above, using that file.
It’s important that when you attempt to access the server for the first time in the “Restore Access to Plex Media Server” section of the article that you do so from a system on the same network (if you can’t do it from a browser on the server itself, as the article suggests). And you need to ensure you access it by its (RFC-1918) IP address, not hostname.
I did find the Preferences.xml file. The file is laid out with all content in a single line. I searched, I reveiwed - the "PlexOnlineHome=“1"” value did not appear anywhere in the file. The other 3 values did.
I made a backup copy of the Preferences.xml file, and made a modified version with the 3 of 4 values I found removed, and with the file replaced, tried once again to sign into the server.
And it signed me right back into the same old environment with no server, no content, no nothing.
This doesn’t seem to be a valid process for what I have.
Please as already asked, provide IP Address of your server, as well as the client you are using, since of not on the same IP Net, as well as been in the Private Address Space, your problems is to be expected!
I can assure you the ip addresses of my server and client are on the same ip net. I did read the instructions and follow them correctly - stop assuming I didn’t!
As a Tech Support Guy, I know how to ask the right questions to get the info I need from someone that doesn’t fully understand what I’m asking.
Ok - I’ve done a little more prodding.
As I referenced above, I wasn’t able to make the exact changes to Preferences.xml as outlined in the link above, so I do not fully know the consequences of that, or how relevant that guide is to my specific situation.
I went into the Portainer console and stopped/started the container, as I figured, maybe the changes to the .xml file required some sort of other restart for it to register the changes.
Once I did that, I once again logged into plex from the ip address of the server from a machine on the same subnet.
Now - my server shows up as unclaimed. I click the claim it now button.
This brings me to the general page for my server - with a gray button to claim server. Clicking this button makes a rotating circle, and it then goes back to claim server.
No matter how many times I click the button to claim the server, it doesn’t claim it, gives me no error, no reason, no useful information as to why it isn’t completing the process, and continues to not claim the server.
