Emby Metadata will not load with Split Tunneling

[Astronut 3]

I use split tunneling on my desktop where I run Emby. Everything works fine except for one thing, metadata will not download while the VPN is on. When I turn the VPN off, it works instantly. I can access the website externally while the VPN is on from both my browser and my phone, so the split tunneling works to some degree at least. I have the EmbyServer and EmbyTray applications both in the exception list. Does Emby use another process I should exempt for metadata to work? Thank you!

[Abobader 2958]

Hello Astronut,

** This is an auto reply **

Please wait for someone from staff support or our members to reply to you.

It's recommended to provide more info, as it explain in this thread:

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Emby Team

[Luke 37251]

Hi, that's strange. Those are the only two processes.

[Astronut 3]

10 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, that's strange. Those are the only two processes.

Is it possible Emby is listing the PC's Source IP (which would be the VPN's I think) as its Source IP? If those are the only 2 processes I can't think of how else it could be getting muddled up. I tested split tunneling on other applications and they work so I'm doubtful the issue lies on Mullvad's end.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Astronut

[Chiefmas 26]

Is any of your stuff on a NAS? A Synology or the like? It sounds to me like what can happen if you have network storage and haven't also added system processes to the VPN exception list. If you have any local resources you access, I'd say it's better in those cases to do IP level split-tunneling instead of app level, and add your local subnet, rather than trying to get every process that needs to touch network resources. 

 

[Astronut 3]

6 minutes ago, Chiefmas said:

Is any of your stuff on a NAS? A Synology or the like? It sounds to me like what can happen if you have network storage and haven't also added system processes to the VPN exception list. If you have any local resources you access, I'd say it's better in those cases to do IP level split-tunneling instead of app level, and add your local subnet, rather than trying to get every process that needs to touch network resources. 

 

I only need QBit (unsure if allowed to say the entire app name) on the VPN. But I'm not using any NAS. The files are all on an external SSD hooked up to my PC. I will look into IP-level split tunneling. Thank you!

[Chiefmas 26]

16 minutes ago, Astronut said:

But I'm not using any NAS. The files are all on an external SSD hooked up to my PC. I will look into IP-level split tunneling. Thank you!

Ok, it's probably not what I was thinking then- all the files would be local to your PC. With network storage, it can get tricky because the system level processes are actually what pull files from remote. It's still worth looking into a subnet split tunnel if you do have anything else on your network though, but if you only have the one computer then I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[Astronut 3]

I don't know if it is my VPN not playing nice with Emby, or Emby not playing nice with my VPN, but I tried another one and it works fine, at least for now. A bit upset about this since I've used my current one for how many years but it is what it is. If anyone else runs into this issue with a VPN please try another one. Thank you Luke and Chiefmas for taking the time to reply I appreciate the help.

[BlavkEntropy 1]

Hi Astronut, 

Is the vpn mullvad?  I have had the same issue for the last month.

I don't think it is a Emby issue, but more a mullvad issue.

[Chiefmas 26]

3 hours ago, BlavkEntropy said:

Hi Astronut, 

Is the vpn mullvad?  I have had the same issue for the last month.

I don't think it is a Emby issue, but more a mullvad issue.

Could be Nord VPN's client as well. Nord's client is known to have broken app level split tunneling, it's probably the most common complaint in the subreddit for them.

@Astronut - it seems like you probably are using an app level split tunnel(that is, using the provider's app). It doesn't seem uncommon, even for big, well known providers, to have broken split tunneling. App level split tunnels just seem unreliable or difficult to implement well. I'm not sure which.

Either way, I always do my split tunnels at the network level(route rules), and I use OpenVPN rather then their own app. Every provider I've seen has stand alone openVPN instructions, they are often running OpenVPN, just with their own interface and modifications to add features like app level split tunneling. I often see people complaining about the apps for this provider or that, but I've almost never had any issues, but as I said, I use the standard OpenVPN client and configure the tunnel myself. I'd suggest you do that to avoid the issues altogether.

 

[Swames 1]

While searching for a solution to this problem, I found a solution on the Jellyfin reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/jellyfin/comments/xyuhdt/comment/ish6ewz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

With Emby you would do it like this;

1. Go to C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\Emby-Server\system
2. Edit EmbyServer.runtimeconfig.json
3. Under configProperties, go to the end of the last existing line and type a comma "," press enter and paste "System.Net.DisableIPv6": true

Should look something like this:

{
  "runtimeOptions": {
    "tfm": "net6.0",
    "includedFrameworks": [
      {
        "name": "Microsoft.NETCore.App",
        "version": "6.0.29"
      },
      {
        "name": "Microsoft.AspNetCore.App",
        "version": "6.0.29"
      }
    ],
    "configProperties": {
      "System.Reflection.Metadata.MetadataUpdater.IsSupported": false,
      "System.Net.DisableIPv6": true
    }
  }
}

This works for me with Mullvad VPN split tunneling. Only problem I noticed is that this file resets after every update, I haven't had time to test but maybe this can be remedied by making the file read only? Hopefully the devs find this post and implements some sort of fix so this wont be necessary.