SOLVED Unable to Connect PMS to Plex After Replacing Router

[Jayden67]

I’ve had Plex running successfully for the last year with no problems. Last week my Dlink router of six years stopped responding so I replaced it with a new Netgear Nighthawk. The Dlink’s internal IP address range was 192.168.0.X but the Nighthawk’s is 192.168.1.X. In the FreeNAS Plex jail settings, I changed the IP and set port forwarding and static IPs on the router. When I attempt to publish the PMS to my Plex account it will not connect.

I initially assumed the problem was the router’s configuration not being compatible with Plex so I sought assistance through the Plex support forums. For more background on my issue please read my post: Unable to Connect PMS to Plex. After reviewing my log file, Plex forum moderator sa2000 responded that problem lie with my “network / jail setup” which suggested the problem was on the FreeNAS side.

Searching this forum I discovered several references to Bug #3758: DNS changes do not propagate into jails in connection to other people asking for help with Plex. I assume this is my problem, because, like Kirk Gleason #8, I can ping 8.8.8.8 but cannot resolve any DNS. This problem was solved for nemo1478 by editing the /etc/resolv.conf file and adding DNS information (No remote access to Plex on FreeNAS after changing ISP.).

Now that I know what file to edit, I need to know what to put in the resolv.conf file to make it work. The current /etc/resolv.conf file in my Plex jail consists of one commented out line:

Code:

# Generated by resolvconf search hsd1.mi.comcast.net.nameserver 192.168.0.1 

My ISP is still Comcast, but the router IP has changed to 192.168.1.1. I never reviewed the file before I changed the IP information through the FreeNAS GUI so I don't know what information belongs in this file.


Below is the output from running ifconfig from the Plex jail:

Code:

root@plexmediaserver_1:/ # ping www.google.com                                  
ping: cannot resolve www.google.com: Host name lookup failure 
                 
root@plexmediaserver_1:/ # ifconfig                                            
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384              
        options=600003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>                  
        inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128                                                
        inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1                              
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000                                      
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>                              
epair0b: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500  
        options=8<VLAN_MTU>                                                    
        ether 02:53:74:00:0f:0b                                                
        inet 192.168.1.199 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255          
        nd6 options=9<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED>                                    
        media: Ethernet 10Gbase-T (10Gbase-T <full-duplex>)                    
        status: active  

 

[danb35]

Why not simply change the new router's internal IP to match the old one?

 

[Jailer]

Why not simply change the new router's internal IP to match the old one?

Yeah, this. I'm kinda lazy and always look for the easy way to do things so this is a no brainer.

 

[Jayden67]

Yeah, this. I'm kinda lazy and always look for the easy way to do things so this is a no brainer.

After spending days pulling my hair out trying to restore Plex connectivity, simply changing the router's IP address scheme seems very appealing. However, I know that there’s a FreeNAS based solution to this problem (that hopefully won’t require me to reconfigure a network of static IPs). I’m just not experienced enough with FreeNAS to know what information should be in the jail’s resolv.conf file.

 

[Jayden67]

Apparently, I was so focused on the problem that I overlooked the obvious; the commented line is the (only) part of the file that needs to be edited. Or maybe in this context, the hash symbol doesn’t represent a comment?

Once I accepted that this problem wasn’t limited to Plex, but affects DNS in all jails, I widened my search criteria and found this post: “After changing global dns all jails will not resolve hostnames” in which the first response shows the command to run to fix the problem. The solution is to simply replace the resolv.conf file in the jail with the resolv.conf file in the root FreeNAS directory. After running the cp command and verifying that DNS was working, I opened the resolv.conf file in the jail and… *facepalm* the only difference between the two files was the router’s IP address.

 

[Jailer]

All the more reason to do as Loudmouth suggested.......