Keep having to re-add server on all apps

[dingdongyo 2]

I have Emby Premiere and I mostly use it to host home videos so my family can access them from wherever. I've added them all as users and even made most create an Emby ID so I could link them. I add the Emby apps to whichever televisions they own and it works while I'm there. However, every one starts failing after a while with "Cannot connect to server". The server still shows after logging in, but when selected it throws a "Cannot connect..." error. I have to delete and re-add the server, which is a pain and not something that most of my family knows how to do. This includes apps across Roku, Fire TV and Android - I've had to do this with all of them multiple times.

Server notes:

• OS = Windows 11
• Encryption set up with Caddy

It always seems to be after at least a week or so of them not using the app when it starts failing to connect, which is making me guess that it has something to do with the device license revoking automatically after inactivity. This is a real pain since my family isn't likely to watch home videos constantly. Just every once in a while for special occasions like holidays and birthdays. I don't want to have to re-add the server every time, I just want the license to reapply when they log back in.

Does this sound like it's probably the issue? Is there any way to prevent a device from losing its license? Or, is there some way to log back in that would reconnect properly? I can get logs if helpful.

[Abobader 3464]

Hello dingdongyo,

** 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:

Thank you.

Emby Team

[ebr 16185]

15 minutes ago, dingdongyo said:

Does this sound like it's probably the issue?

Hi.  No, it doesn't.  Nothing in our registration prevents you from connecting to your server.

What it sounds like is that your server IP address may be changing...  is it possible that is the case?

[dingdongyo 2]

4 hours ago, ebr said:

What it sounds like is that your server IP address may be changing...  is it possible that is the case?

I'm using a dynamic DNS (no-ip) so I'm entering the same server address every time. I delete the server, then add it back using the exact same URL, and it starts working again.

Thank you for the response by the way, I'm happy to start investigating what's wrong here.

[Luke 42080]

Does your server dashboard display the ddns URL as your remote address?

[dingdongyo 2]

4 hours ago, Luke said:

Does your server dashboard display the ddns URL as your remote address?

It does not. I'm assuming I would check this by going to Manage Emby Server and checking Remote (WAN) Access. There it shows an IP address.

The way I currently have it set up, I use a Caddyfile to redirect from my dynamic DNS URL to the local IP/port of the server. Caddy manages the SSL certificate so it stays encrypted. That was the instructions I found to do it, apologies if that's improper.

How would I go about setting the dynamic DNS directly on the server? And would it still be encrypted that way? Please wrangle me if I'm asking the wrong questions.

[Happy2Play 9781]

Pretty sure you have to apply your domain here

Network (Hosting) Settings | Emby Documentation #external-wan-address

 

 

[darkassassin07 652]

Emby server passes the in-home/remote addresses to clients to connect with. They will eventually fallback to those forgetting whatever you used for manual connection.

 

All you are missing is three settings under network:

External Domain = <your domain>

Secure Connection Mode = Handled by Reverse Proxy

And finally,

Public Https Port Number = 443 (or the port your caddy proxy listens on)

 

This will modify the remote address shown in the dash/passed to clients to be:

Https://<your domain>:443

With connections still passed through/secured by caddy.

[Luke 42080]

@dingdongyoplease let us know if this helps. Thanks.

[dingdongyo 2]

On 6/5/2024 at 6:51 PM, darkassassin07 said:

Emby server passes the in-home/remote addresses to clients to connect with. They will eventually fallback to those forgetting whatever you used for manual connection.

 

All you are missing is three settings under network:

External Domain = <your domain>

Secure Connection Mode = Handled by Reverse Proxy

And finally,

Public Https Port Number = 443 (or the port your caddy proxy listens on)

 

This will modify the remote address shown in the dash/passed to clients to be:

Https://<your domain>:443

With connections still passed through/secured by caddy.

Hello all, so sorry for delay, some things came up. I just made the changes quoted here, thank you very much for the details. Will monitor over the next few days and see if this solves the issue.

[dingdongyo 2]

TL;DR - I think I fixed it by adding Emby as a service.

I have been getting some inconsistent results and trying to narrow down to info that may be helpful. Every time the mini PC hosting Emby restarted, my Emby apps still failed to connect to the dynamic DNS URL (even after making the settings changes to the server described before). For the longest time I thought it had something to do with Caddy because every time I remoted into the PC to manually restart the Caddy service (even though it was already started), the dynamic DNS URL started working again. Eventually I found that simply remoting in was getting it to work. I noticed that when I remoted in, a browser window appeared to display the Emby server. I don't think Emby was starting until I logged into the PC (even though it was set to start when Windows starts). I followed the instructions to make an Emby Service and restarted the PC, and for the first time I didn't have to re-enter the dynamic DNS URL to connect. That might have solved it.