Plex Plugin will not start in FN11

[daword2011]

I have been running FreeNAS since 2010 and it has treated me extremely well up until this point. I recently moved from FN 9.10 to 11.1 and it has been a very smooth process until last night. I had our internet provider change out the modem because our service was getting upgraded and they informed me that I HAD to use their modem/router combo or get my own modem. So I attempted to disable NAT on that modem/router but they disabled everything minus wifi management. Because this modem/router doesn't allow port forwarding, ddns, or other settings I have ordered a new one, but it will take a few days to arrive. In the meantime, I changed the subnet of my current (very nice) router and got everything back up and running. Then I had to re-do my static ip, ethernet interface, jail ip's, and some other network settings in my FN box. After everything was done Plex would start and run fine, however, the media wasn't showing up. I edited the jail storage to point where the server was looking and Plex suddenly stopped and would not start again. As a result, I decided to remove my Plex plugin, delete the jail, and rebuild it from scratch in fear that the I botched something with the plugin. After re-installing the plugin Plex would not start, it would attempt to start and then "time out" the plugin. At this point, I thought it would be a better idea to start with a fresh install of FN 11.1 in case I messed up anything network related (Windoze guy), so I completely deleted my jails dataset and fresh installed FN11 and got everything up and running again, import my volume, install Plex plugin (to completely new jails dataset) and it runs! Awesome, so I add the storage so the plugin can see my media files and the plugin stops again. If I remove the storage from the jail it will start and run, but as soon as I add the storage again the plugin stops. If I try and turn the plugin on it will load for a second and then go right back to off.

Has anyone run into this issue or have any insight? I am thinking this may be a bug but haven't tried it on a VM or anything to confirm.

Hardware:
ASRock EP2C602 Mobo
2x E5-2630 V2 CPU's
16 GB ECC RAM
6x 2 TB HDD's in RAID Z2
FN 11.1 (haven't added feature flags yet)

 

[DraXxus]

I have the same issue as you. At the moment I don't have a solution, but I feel your pain.

Hopefully one of the FreeNAS Gurus will be able us.

 

[Jailer]

That sounds like a bug. File a bug report and post the issue number in this thread.

 

[DraXxus]

Thanks for the advise Jailer.

Issue #27377 created.

 

[daword2011]

Thanks for the advise Jailer.

Issue #27377 created.

Thanks for that DraX, I will keep an eye on the bug. Plex is by far my most used plugin, hopefully it is an easily addressed issue.

 

[Jailer]

@DraXxus I would add a brief description of the problem to that bug ticket so the devs don't have to go looking for a thread in the forum. Keep the link, just add some description as well.

 

[DraXxus]

Okay I have managed to get the service to start and stop.


The IP address assigned to the plex server is 192.168.0.2


If you change this IP address FreeNAS doesn’t like it. When I went into my router 192.168.0.2 was being used by Sky. I resigned Sky to a new IP address by going into my router (192.168.0.1) and reserving an address in the LAN TCP/IP Setup. I then reserved 192.168.02 for the Plex Media Server.



I would have though the Plex plug-in would have changed its IP address to one that is available. Maybe is this the bug?



I then restarted my router and FreeNAS box. This fixed the issue and I was able to start and stop the Plex service.



One problem down!!!



Here comes the second problem. I am have the issue where FreeNAS 11 Plex plugin cannot add folders. I have tried the suggestions in the thread linked below, but no luck so far.



https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/freenas-11-plex-plugin-cannot-add-folders.54138/

 

[Jailer]

This fixed the issue and I was able to start and stop the Plex service.

You said you had the same problem as @daword2011 but yours is obviously different. This is why users are asked to start their own thread. @daword2011 issue is when he adds storage the plugin stops and when he removes it it starts. You are obviously having other issues so start your own thread.

 

[DraXxus]

My issue was the same. In that when I added storage the plugin would not start. However I found a solution to get around what maybe a bug?

I am now working on a secondary issue. Should I need help with this I will post a new thread.

 

[daword2011]

@DraXxus I would add a brief description of the problem to that bug ticket so the devs don't have to go looking for a thread in the forum. Keep the link, just add some description as well.

Added for ease of understanding.

You said you had the same problem as @daword2011 but yours is obviously different. This is why users are asked to start their own thread. @daword2011 issue is when he adds storage the plugin stops and when he removes it it starts. You are obviously having other issues so start your own thread.

@Jailer, @DraXxus and I have a conversation going in the background and I think there may be some confusion. After discussing more he has progressed through the same issues I had and after adding the library files his plugin now shows the same symptoms. I am going to try and roll back to 9.10 and see if it resolves the issues with the plugin.

 

[daword2011]

Looks like the bug report has gone private, I think I may have found a workaround or possibly the root of the issue. I rolled back to FN 9.10 and was still getting the same issues. I began to run down the possible changes that I may have made to cause the issue. I began inspecting and one of the issues I came across involved the mapping of the jail storage. When upgrading to FN11.1 my server kept the same Plex settings it had in the past. After reinstalling the plugin I had to setup the Plex libraries again. I had ran into an issue where I could not navigate to the root directory to get to the /media folder inside the jail (/mnt/"poolname"/"datasetname"/"jailname"/media) where people recommend you point the jail storage to. After some toying around I found that when you pointed the storage to the default directory (/var/db/plexdata/Plex Media Server) it would switch the plugin to off. If you drop it to that media folder instead then it seems to run properly. I have attached some screen clips to help explain myself. After "fixing" the jail storage I could load Plex and point it to the /media folder and it worked!!

TL;DR: I changed the jail storage settings and it seems to have fixed the issue so far. I still believe this may be a bug specific to FN11.1. However, there is also an issue where in FN11 you cannot see the root directory for the jail, so you cannot point to the "recommended" /media folder inside of the jail.

 

[DraXxus]

With alot of help from @daword2011 and @Jailer I have got this working in FN11.1https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?members/daword2011.58304/

I've got it working in 11.1 using a Comand Line Interface install. This was based on this install method linked below, however the install command was outdated.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...to-install-plex-in-a-freenas-11-0-jail.19412/

The commands are:

jls
jexec 1 tcsh
pkg update && pkg upgrade -y
pkg install plexmediaserver <--- New install command
sysrc plexmediaserver_enable=YES
service plexmediaserver start



The Storage looks like this:

Plex Library Looks like this:

The one issue is that the Plex Plug-In does not come up as installed.

Hopefully this will help someone else.

 

[Jailer]

The one issue is that the Plex Plug-In does not come up as installed.

That's because it's not a plugin. You installed in a standard jail (the recommended way) and there is no "buttons" to push in the GUI to start and stop it. If you do need to start or stop use standard service commands from the jail CLI to do so.