Plex Loading Issues on New Build

TrueNAS General
1

Hello,

Issue:
Media is loading and only playing a few seconds at a time before loading again.

Background
I decided to start semi fresh after my mobo died a month ago. New motherboard, CPU, RAM, 512GB SSD (For apps) & NMVe (OS). I installed a brand new TrueNAS Scale instance of Electric Eel on the NMVe. Imported the drives and setup the new application pool. Installed Plex and configured enabled port forwarding on the router.

Prior to receiving the new SSD and NMVe the previous system drive was plugged in and everything worked as expected.

Troubleshooting/Info:
• I have not upgraded any of the storage pools in ElectricEel
• Peak network out traffic is roughly 55.52 Mb/s so I don’t believe this is a networking bottleneck
• CPU is barely being utilized and I am using GPU passthrough

Please let me know if anyone has any ideas or suggestions to troubleshoot this issue as I am unable to figure out how to fix it - Thank you!

My system:
TrueNAS Version: ElectricEel-24.10.0.2
• Motherboard: ASRock 550m Steel Legend
• RAM Qty: 2x 32GB Patriot Elite 2
• CPU Make/Model: AMD Ryzen 7 5800x
• GPU Make/Model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB
• On-Board-NIC: Realtek® 2.5GbE LAN chip (2.5 Gbit/1 Gbit/100 Mbit)
• NVMe (System-SSD): FIKwok PCI3 3.0 NVMe M.2 SSD
• Pools: 1x 16TB, 2x 8TB, 1x 512GB SSD, 2x 4TB

2

Assuming you have plex pass, using the plex pass image and have hardware transcoding enabled for the app and in the plex web settings? And the nvidia drivers installed (something you have to do in EE)?

What does the Plex web dashboard say about the media & client?

Those will let you know if you actually have hardware transcoding working.

Could also be your playback device. What happens if you use the plex web on a machine on your home network?

Plex web also has the troubleshooting section where you can download the logs. Might be something in there.

3

Thank you very much for the troubleshooting suggestions. You assumed correct I have enabled hardware transcoding and installed the nvidea drivers. I went down the list you provided and reviewed the logs within Plex. It appears to be a network communication issue.

I am using a separate modem and router (Deco) setup in access point mode to extend the network. I have port forwarding setup on the modem. I DHCP released the lease table in the modem.

Any suggestions based on the logs captured below?

Logs below:

{
“type”: “log:message”,
“level”: 4,
“message”: “[Connections] Testing connection for TARDIS at http://127.0.0.1:32400/media/providers”,
“time”: “2024-11-15T05:42:23.198Z”
},
{
“type”: “log:message”,
“level”: 4,
“message”: “[Connections] Testing connection for TARDIS at https://172-105-14-106.8ac54764fe254322b09194ba7cd44c71.plex.direct:8443/media/providers”,
“time”: “2024-11-15T05:42:23.209Z”
},
{
“type”: “log:message”,
“level”: 4,
“message”: “[Connections] Testing all 1 connection(s) for [Loopback]”,
“time”: “2024-11-15T05:42:23.220Z”
},
{
“type”: “log:message”,
“level”: 4,
“message”: “[Servers] Waiting for initial servers = [Loopback]”,
“time”: “2024-11-15T05:42:23.221Z”
},
{
“type”: “log:message”,
“level”: 4,
“message”: “[Commands] Executing testServerConnection”,
“time”: “2024-11-15T05:42:23.223Z”
},
{
“type”: “log:message”,
“level”: 4,
“message”: “[Connections] Retrying connection tests for [Loopback] in 30 seconds”,
“time”: “2024-11-15T05:42:23.223Z”
},
{
“type”: “log:message”,
“level”: 4,
“message”: “[Connections] Testing connection for [Loopback] at http://127.0.0.1:32400/media/providers”,
“time”: “2024-11-15T05:42:23.274Z”
},
{
“type”: “log:message”,
“level”: 4,
“message”: “[Connections] Testing legacy connection for [Loopback] at http://127.0.0.1:32400”,
“time”: “2024-11-15T05:42:23.275Z”
},
{
“type”: “log:message”,
“level”: 1,
“message”: “[Connections] TARDIS is unavailable at https://172-105-14-106.8ac54764fe254322b09194ba7cd44c71.plex.direct:8443/media/providers (Status 0)”,
“time”: “2024-11-15T05:42:23.380Z”
},

4

Is your server on wifi? Or plugged into the deco then using it’s wifi? Might just be too slow/inconsistent to be used for plex. Or just issues with how you have things set up.

Doesn’t look like there’s any speedtest apps in the iX catalogue, but there are plenty of dockerhub projects that you could install with custom yaml.

5

Thanks for all your help! Tried plugging it directly into the modem and bypassing the Deco Access point, performed multiple steps on other posts with no luck. I decided to reset my modem even though nothing other than port forwarding (tried it disabled) was configured and it magically worked after that. The tried and tested “reset” worked. So I feel like some setting or something else was not correct there but happy it now works after a few days of troubleshooting.