Plex plugin using inappropriate IP address, resists change

[Bigtexun]

So I was standing up a temporary plex server to test some things before I commit my main plex server to some upgrades, and I ran into the most annoying problem... For whatever reason. the system insists on using 192.168.1.1 for the plex jail. That IP is a reserved IP on my network, so it was free, but NOT available for use. It is not in the DHCP range, so where did this come from and why? When I change it, the server just errors out when I try to start it from the plugin services gui page.

I do a lot of router development, and I have that IP reserved for when I must attach a build test to the network. my default gateway is .2, and the DHCP range starts at 150, so there is no good reason for this IP to be forced.

The environment is a freshly built 9.10 machine running from an 8g thumb drive, with updates applied, a single raidZ2 filesystem, and a freshly installed plex plugin. It is about as clean out of the box as you can get. The server is a Dell T1700, 16g ECC memory, the filesystem is the LSI 9211-i8 flashed in IT mode with a stack of new drives. Other than the system itself not being one of the the recommended Supermicro system, I'm pretty sure I haven't made any grievous errors, this is my 10th or 12th FreeNAS build, and this has me perplexed... Granted, I only have one other Plex server, and I have reinstalled the plex jail a few times on that system, and it never acted like this under 9.3... Is this some new behavior under 9.10?

Plex seems to run fine when I leave it at the IP address it wants... I copied my content folder to the new server, and linked it to the plex jail through the gui, the only thing I've done from the command line was copy the content from the other server with scp...

When I went in to assign the IP, I was surprised that is had the one it had pre-populated, and I kept getting plugin startup errors after trying to change it... The error was something like "an error has occurred". I reinstalled the plugin several times, and finally I decided to leave the IP alone to see if it worked then, and it works fine...

I assume the errors are caused by the IP being set in more than one place, so changing it in the plugin config gui is not changing it everywhere it needs to be set. So I see two issues, inappropriate IP selection, and the gui not successfully making the change everywhere it needs to. It's not a huge problem, and this will work for the purposes of my temporary test fixture, but...

 

[Jailer]

Set the IP range you want in the configuration tab and you won't have that problem. Otherwise choose DHCP and let your router figure it out.

 

[diedrichg]

Is VIMAGE enabled in the jail advanced settings?

 

[Bigtexun]

Set the IP range you want in the configuration tab and you won't have that problem. Otherwise choose DHCP and let your router figure it out.

THE configuration tab? Can you be a little bit more specific? The configuration tab for plugins only has the repository URL. There are a lot of configuration tabs scattered throughout the system. But if I'm understanding what this means, this is an odd feature. Ahh, this might be it, under "ipv4 start address and ipv4 end address" in the jails configuration after pressing the advanced button.

So this defaults to the whole local subnet. I applaud the use of static IP addresses picked from a range over DHCP, I think, but why can't just I set it? So the blank that asks for the IP in the plugin config is useless, and doesn't work at all? Really? This isn't even up to the "half baked" standard.

I see that my 9.3 system has this feature as well. It has been a while since I set up a plugin/jail, but when I set plex up before, I know I was able to keep the plex app at a specific IP of my choosing, and I reinstalled it at least a couple times.

So I guess assigning an IP isn't the correct thing to do? I should let some autoconfig thing pick the IP? I get it that this is an appliance, and being easy to use is a feature of appliances. But the UI should allow the admin to override preselects, and be able to change something like the IP at any time.

So thanks Jailer for pointing me in the right direction... What an odd feature...

 

[Bigtexun]

Is VIMAGE enabled in the jail advanced settings?

So under the jails config, that setting does not present itself. However when I manually create a jail, VIMAGE is checked.

I guess my direct experience with FreeBSD jails is pretty slim, so perhaps this is related to some time saving configuration pre-selects in FreeBSD? I'm guessing I used FreeBSD jails in the 1990's briefly, and never again until FreeNAS. So I guess I should go look into that and see what all of the options are and what they do. Perhaps it seems like an odd new feature to me, and really this is how it'd been done all along.

 

[brk9422]

I am having the same issue. The jail automatically chose the IP of 192.168.0.2 but I would much prefer it to be 192.168.0.104. I tried to statically assign but it fails to start the service and throws an error (below). When I tell it to use DHCP it ignores what my static dhcp lease is configured to be (I chose a fake MAC address though, which is perhaps the problem?). I told it to use the MAC address of 00:11:22:33:44:55 and then in my router (pfSense) assigned that MAC to 192.168.0.104. However, when trying to use DHCP it ignores that and still binds to 192.168.0.2. Please let me know how to fix this. The error is below and 192.168.0.105 is the IP address of the FreeNAS host machine.

Code:

Jul 13 17:00:03 mars manage.py: [freeadmin.navtree:577] Couldn't retrieve https://192.168.0.105/plugins/plexmediaserver/1/_s/treemenu: ('timed out',)

 

[Allan Wilmath]

Did not know Jails went back that far! They will always suck I guess.

There should be a setting in the Jails configuration accessed from the left side bar that defines the starting IP for Jails, also used by Plug-ins. Thought 192.168.0.104 being your desired address means you could easily go in to your router and change that setting with even less effort. Just move the DHCP starting address up to 10 or 20 instead of 2.

 

[Jailer]

On the configuration tab select Advanced to see the options to change the IP range.

 

[brk9422]

I have already done that (assuming the screenshot below is what you are referring to). My issue seems to be that the IP address is not being honored. I put in a phony MAC address and then also went into my pfSense router and set up a static lease for that MAC address but it still wants to take the 192.168.0.2 address. Am I doing something wrong or is this a bug? Is there any reason why I shouldn't go into shell mode and manually modify the jail config? I have experience doing that for standard FreeBSD servers, but have never attempted to modify the jails in FreeNAS.

 

[Jailer]

No that's not it. In the jails section click on the configuration tab and then click on Advanced. You can limit the IP range there to what you want.

 

[brk9422]

Ah gotcha, thanks. When I update it, I get that error in red. Is that expected (may not actually be an error?) Let me know please and I will make the other mods and try to re start the service and test it all out. I think I should also check the DHCP option right, or will this force a static IP and then I can delete my mapping in pfSense? IDC either way as long as the jail gets 192.168.0.104.

 

[Jailer]

Are you trying to change your jails dataset? And the reason you can't assign a static IP to your jail is you have DHCP enabled. If you want to set a static IP you have to uncheck the DHCP box.

 

[brk9422]

No I just want to change the IP AFAIK, not the dataset. When I uncheck DHCP and specify the address I want, it still picks 192.168.0.2. I was hoping selecting DHCP and forcing the static lease in the router would help but it does not. I will send a screenshot of the configuration I am hoping to use. Hopefully we can figure out why it is not taking the IP that I specify.

 

[brk9422]

This is the configuration I used when not selecting DHCP.

Then the service fails to start with the same error showing in the console as the one before.

I didnt notice any differences when using NAT vs not.

 

[brk9422]

Does anyone know what is up with this? I really hate having this jail never honoring the IP that I provide. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[kamranjkhan]

i had the same issue, and after reading this thread, i couldnt find away around it, other than setting the ip range i want my plugins to be in, from the jails configuration tab:

and then deleted and re-installing the plugins all over again. thankfully the storage attached persists, but you do have to reinitialize the plugins.

after this the plugins ips are still being set by freenas, but at least they are sequentially in the range that i want them to be in.

if i manually set the ip address of the plug in or did it on my router with a static ip the plugin would fail to start.

 

[Cocksy]

i had the same issue, and after reading this thread, i couldnt find away around it, other than setting the IP range i want my plugins to be in, from the jails configuration tab:
View attachment 20696
and then deleted and re-installing the plugins all over again. thankfully the storage attached persists, but you do have to reinitialize the plugins.

after this the plugins ips are still being set by freenas, but at least they are sequentially in the range that i want them to be in.

if i manually set the IP address of the plug in or did it on my router with a static IP the plugin would fail to start.

I'm having the same issue - Plex plugin always defaults to 192.168.0.2 (which is outside of the range I set in my DHCP server), and if i try to set a static IP, it wont load the plugins page (in freenas) with the same error (navtree...timed out).
Did anyone manage to work out why it wasn't honoring or working with manually assigned IP addresses?

 

[dirar]

I had a static IP range set in the Jail configuration. But new plugins were assigned another old range that I am not using anymore. I was able to solve the issue by enabling DHCP assign in the the Jail conf, save, and then set the IP range agian, and now it works

 

[Cocksy]

Thanks - I'll take a look at that.

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