Plex vex
Lately, Plex has been driving us batty when it forgets that the server and the TV that we use as the primary consumption device are actually on the same local network. About half the time, you find the media you want to play, hit the start button and Plex says “haha, nope you need PlexPass to play content from a remote server.” Um, I can see the server from here!
You can usually fix the problem by going back to the Roku home screen and closing the Plex app (not even sure what that actually does) and starting it up again. Most of the time that works, but its a drag to do that every time you want to use Plex.
After much wrangling with Claude, it seems that its timing related condition. When you start the Plex app on Roku, it phones home to Plex to get list of sources to offer. In our case, its exactly one; we don’t use any remote Plex servers. After getting the list of servers it already knows about it, it does a local network scan using GDM to find any servers on the local network.
When GDM does its thing, it finds the servers and notes their capabilities. The problem seems to be GDM takes too long and/or the server takes too long to answer, it assumes that the server is remote. This makes the problem fun to diagnose because its somewhat intermittent.
After trying a bunch of random switches, nothing seemed to stop the problem. Per Claude suggestions, I ended doing these steps:
Gave my Plex server a DHCP reservation for IP address. It didn’t have one previously, but somehow always keeps the same IP address, maybe its just that I haven’t restarted my router in ages. Normally, this is easy to do, just log into the router and turn on DHCP reservation for the IP that’s currently connected. Except, with gFiber, the router doesn’t have a log in. You manage via a phone app, or through a web portal. Fine, whatever, lets try the app. Go to connected devices list and there are no DHCP options. Grumble, go to portal; can see that the app is just a wrapper on the same pages in the portal, which also don’t have any DHCP options. Turns out that I picked the perfect time to do this random network stuff, gFiber was doing a big rollout of app and portal for their rebranding (Google Fiber was a part of google, its now gFiber and owned/run by another company.) Eventually, the DHCP option showed up and I finished the setup.
In the Rlex app (on tv) I add a manual connection. Straightforward, just type in IP and port number.
In Rlex server set up, add the same IP in a field called Custom server access URLs. Not sure what option even does. I’m on the server itself, why do I need to tell it the IP that’s already running on? Meh.
A day later and the problem seems like its fixed. No prompts to get a PlexPass. Lets hope it sticks.