Bug: Bind Address 127.0.0.1

[soniCron 5]

(This is likely a bug in the server, and possibly ALSO a bug in at least one client, so please bear with me though the client bug until I get to the likely cause.)

 

Prior to 4.0, I accessed my server through an Nginx reverse proxy and set Emby to bind to 127.0.0.1 for security reasons. However, this setup appears to have exposed a bug in Emby for Kodi. (And possibly other clients, though I haven't tested, so please read on.)

 

With it bound to localhost, the plug-in throws an exception when (I think) the auto discovery portion runs. Even if I set a manual address, it errors with "Emby.entrypoint.service: 'Address'."

 

Switching the Emby bind address to 0.0.0.0 or the actual IP address of the interface allows the Emby for Kodi plugin to run properly and connect. This was after a database wipe and also after uninstalling the plugin. The server and the Kodi client (on both Android and Linux) are on different machines.

 

I didn't look too closely at the Emby for Kodi code, but my guess is that either it's trying to pull info from 127.0.0.1 (and fails) or it recognizes that it's a local address and aborts. If it's the former, that should be treated as a possible security issue.

 

I haven't tried changing the local bind address of the server back to localhost since getting it working, and I don't expect this to be fixed given my unusual setup with the proxy as well as using DNS hairpinning to access the server locally.

 

HOWEVER...

 

It is not "correct" to always assume that the bind address of the server is necessarily the *access* address and report itself as accessible from that location. This is a design flaw in the way the server reports its location, OR a bug in how at least one Emby client (Emby for Kodi) handles Emby server's perceived location (and ultimately fails to be rendered useable even with manual settings).

 

Conclusion:

 

I suggest (but do not expect) that the server include a "baseurl" style definition, as it does with the public address, but for local access. It is a regression that access to a FQDN--which resolves to a locally accessible IP address of a reverse proxy web server--no longer works with Emby 4.0 and at least 1 client, Emby for Kodi.

[Luke 37250]

We'll test this out but I would suggest just blanking out the field and then it should work. Thanks.