Plex Media Server: Refuses to Connect (Corral)

[jonpol]

Hi,

Situation: I have been running Plex Media Server using FreeNAS Corral for the past few years without incident, but with no intentional changed on my part I suddenly can no longer use it: When I try to connect with the web interface using [IPADDRESS]:32400/web my browser says that it refuses to connect (ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED). I can still ping the IP address. As far as I can tell everything else about FreeNAS is working correctly as it always has; it is just the Plex Media Server docker container that is behaving differently.

Problem: I'm having trouble figuring out how to even start troubleshooting. I think the combination of my inexperience and Corral being discontinued is making it hard for me to know what to search for and knowing what information I'm reading is still relevant or not. I'm grateful for any help any one can give, but I guess my two main questions at this point would be:

• Since I can't access the Plex web interface, how can I find any kind of logs or error messages using FreeNAS? (More details below on what I've tried and what's confusing me)
• [Optimistic] Are there any reasons why Plex Media Server would (apparently) suddenly stop working? Like, for example, maybe a new version was automatically downloaded when the server was restarted, and it's incompatible with FreeNAS Corral?

Exact Error Messages:

• In Chrome web browser using [IPADDRESS]:32400/web:
  • This site can’t be reached
  • [IPADDRESS] refused to connect.
  • ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED
• When trying to connect from plex.tv:
  • The server "FreeNAS-Basement" is unreachable.
  • The server "FreeNAS-Basement" is unavailable

System Details:

• System Version: FreeNAS-Corral-10.0.4
• iXsystems FreeNAS Mini XL 48TB (8 x 6TB)
  • Purchased 31 March 2017
  • It came with 9.10.2 from iXsystems, but I immediately changed to Corral before doing anything
• Eight-Core 2.4GHz CPU (17W)
• Hot-Swap 8 x 3.5” SATA 32GB RAM Standard
• 2 x 1GbE Ethernet Standard
• 1 x Remote Management NIC
• I have a single volume for my data
  • raidz
  • Total: 43.5 TB
  • Used: 12.24 TB
  • Free: 32.26 TB
• There is also a boot volume
  • Capacity 16 GB
  • Capacity Used 67%
• I mostly interact with the system through SMB shares and my Windows computer. There are various Plex clients that connect to it and a SqueezeBox touch that uses a Logitech Media Server docker container (which is on a different docker host than the Plex Media Server).

Docker Container:

• It is PlexPass
• It is using Bridged network mode
• It is using DHCP, but my router has a reserved address for it and can see it connected (and I can ping it successfully)
• It has been long enough that I don't remember if I had to change anything else from the default, or what else might be relevant :(. I can give more information if it would be useful.

What I remember happening:

• About a week ago I started to watch a movie using Plex. It played for about a minute only and then kind of froze (this was using a separate dedicated machine with Plex Media Player on it). After a long time it said that there was an error (I don't remember what it was), but it was late and I was tired so I just gave up.
• I don't remember how many days afterwards I investigated, but the FreeNAS server was still running but I couldn't connect to the Plex Media Server. I rebooted the entire FreeNAS machine, but still couldn't connect to Plex Media Server. Before this I hadn't been paying too much attention because I figured it was a "normal computer glitch" that would go away or fix itself. In the FreeNAS web UI I noticed that although the Docker Host had a green light next to it the actual container for the Plex Media Server had a grey dot. I think I stopped and restarted the server, but still only a grey dot. I think that I then rebooted the Docker Host, and when it came back it was green and the docker container also became green. When I clicked the "Web UI" button in the docker container, though (which opens up [IPADDRESS]:32400/web in a browser), I got the connection refused error.

More details:

I'm comfortable with tech in general and Windows computers, but I'm a pretty big n00b when it comes to networking things and non-Windows computers, so I apologize in advance. This is my first experience with FreeNAS and I did try to read a lot of material and watch a lot of videos before and after buying the system, but once I got things set up and working I didn't have to worry about it and have forgotten most of what I learned.

It is really embarrassing, but I'm having trouble even figuring out how to get any information from the docker container that could help me figure out what is going on. In the Corral UI I can go to the Docker Container, and instead of choosing "Web UI" I can click "Console", but I haven't been able to successfully find anything that helps. In the directory where the console window starts there is a "version.txt" file, and if I enter "head version.txt" it says "plexpass", so that's good. Otherwise, though, I don't seem to be able to find any files that are helpful. I did find a var/lib/plexmediaserver/ directory, which seems like it should maybe have a "Logs" directory according to this, but the directory seems empty when I do an "ls" command (maybe I'm just doing the wrong command, though?).

I wondered if maybe I should use this opportunity to try and move from Corral to the new FreeNAS versions, but I was also having some embarrassing newbie confusion reading about that. If that's what I should do to fix the Plex problem I can give more information about what was causing me problems there, but I didn't want to give too much information in the initial post and scare people away.

If anyone can help me with how to find and look at the logs I would be really grateful! (Or if you have any ideas of what might have caused Plex Media Server to stop working, please let me know.) Thanks very much in advance!

 

[garm]

I would say, backup the plex database according to what ever method is stated on the plex support site and start moving over to a supported FreeNAS version with a supported FreeBSD build https://www.ixsystems.com/community...ng-from-freenas-corral-to-freenas-9-10-11.36/
and recreate your Plex server in a iocage jail https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.2/jails.html

 

[jonpol]

I would say, backup the plex database according to what ever method is stated on the plex support site and start moving over to a supported FreeNAS version with a supported FreeBSD build https://www.ixsystems.com/community...ng-from-freenas-corral-to-freenas-9-10-11.36/
and recreate your Plex server in a iocage jail https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.2/jails.html

Thank you for taking the time to respond! I had looked at that document about migrating, but this part was giving me pause:

To list datasets that use this aclmode, run the following line in the shell (in FreeNAS Corral):​

zfs list -H -o name,aclmode | awk '/discard_chmod/ { print $1 }'​

To check if your pool is affected by this, try the following command on FreeNAS Corral:​

zfs set aclmode=oops dataset​

This is embarrassing because it shows how little I know about how to use FreeNAS, but I couldn't get those commands to work. I tried from the Corral CLI, but it says "Error: zfs not found". I'm guessing that "the shell" is something different from the CLI, but I have been unsuccessful finding out how to access it from trying things in the GUI or searching on the internet. I have made SMB shares after 2017-03-09, and so I was hesitant to make a big change and risk making things worse.

Could anyone tell me how to access the shell in order to enter those zfs commands?

 

[sretalla]

in the CLI you can type shell if I remember right... then exit when finished to go back to CLI.

I just looked it up: https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/freenas-cli-preview/

that should work.

FYI, it's also the reverse when using SSH to your FreeNAS server, at the SSH prompt, you can get the CLI by typing CLI,,,

It was kind of good what they were trying to do there, but unfortunately it all fell apart due to some technical letdowns from other projects...

 

[jonpol]

in the CLI you can type shell if I remember right... then exit when finished to go back to CLI.

I just looked it up: https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/freenas-cli-preview/

that should work.

FYI, it's also the reverse when using SSH to your FreeNAS server, at the SSH prompt, you can get the CLI by typing CLI,,,

It was kind of good what they were trying to do there, but unfortunately it all fell apart due to some technical letdowns from other projects...

Thank you very much for this. The problem I was having is that I would type "help" like it told me to but then the output would be too much and as far as I can tell there's no way to scroll up to see what I missed :)

 

[sretalla]

You could always pipe it to more:

help | more

 

[danb35]

You could always pipe it to more:

In the FN10 CLI? Maybe not. The correct answer is always to not use the web GUI's shell button, but rather to use a SSH client, which will give you scrollback capabilities.

 

[jonpol]

You could always pipe it to more:

help | more

In the FN10 CLI? Maybe not. The correct answer is always to not use the web GUI's shell button, but rather to use a SSH client, which will give you scrollback capabilities.

I just tested and it does work in the CLI. Thanks for the tip!