[BUG] Apps error out when there are Internet connectivity issues

[lagarto_san 7]

ISPs are not up 100% of the time. Sometimes, the service goes down and you have no Inet access (e.g. scheduled maintenance,  etc). This causes Emby to error out and become unusable even when the only thing I'm doing, or trying to do, is play locally hosted content, i.e. content stored in my own server within my own LAN. This behavior needs to be fixed.

Hopefully, it's pretty obvious that the main point of locally hosting content is to be able to use it without any sort of dependency on, and especially when there's a lack of, Internet connectivity. I've run into this problem multiple times and, I must say, it's quite frustrating.

I've seen this happen when using the mobile and NVIDIA Shield apps. I didn't have enough time to check if it was reproducible from the desktop via the browser.

I've attached a screenshot of the error that pops up on mobile (Android) when this happens.

Thanks in advance.

[ebr 16169]

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in  How to Report a Problem. Thanks!

 

 

[lagarto_san 7]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

 

Hi there, let's look at an example. Please attach the information requested in  How to Report a Problem. Thanks!

 

 

Hi. Sorry that I completely forgot about that page/info . I'll post it as soon as I'm able later tonight.

Thanks.

[lagarto_san 7]

I've attached the log system's log file for the above report. Sorry for not uploading that the first time. Let me know if you have more questions.

Other Notes

Although I hadn't mentioned it for this particular report, you may want to keep an eye out for another issue I've observed that might also be logged in this file: Sometimes, while I'm listening to songs in a play queue, started by playing a manually-created play list, the app will abruptly cease to stream the song --as if the user had pressed the stop button. When I look at the phone, the entire play queue is empty, suggesting some kind of crash. Unfortunately, I haven't found a pattern to it or a way to reproduce it, but I've observed it several times in the last few months while streaming on the phone from the same LAN host. Lastly, while streaming music using the Brave browser, it sometimes abruptly stops and jumps to a different song on the play queue. I don't know if it's related, but I guess it's worth mentioning; it seems reproducible on the Browser. I thought the song might've been corrupted, but this last issue has not been observed when playing the same songs from Firefox or the mobile client app; it seems specific to this Browser. I don't want to derail this topic, so I'll ignore these for now.

Thanks.

embyserver-63881654400.txt

[ebr 16169]

Hi.  At what time in this log did the problem occur?  Exactly what were you doing when you got that message?

[lagarto_san 7]

1 hour ago, ebr said:

Hi.  At what time in this log did the problem occur?  Exactly what were you doing when you got that message?

Hi, I don't have an exact time, but it was roughly within 30–45 or so minutes prior to me posting this report thread.

I was playing music from a playlist on the phone when it happened; the app abruptly stopped playing; when I opened the app to check, the error message kept getting shown over and over. (They'd sometimes stack on top of each other, so pressing the "Got it" button would just reveal the message box behind the top one.) When this happened, I also noticed my phone's wifi icon had the ! mark on it to indicate there was no Inet service. The app's behavior went back to normal after the service was restored by the ISP. The "outage" lasted about 5–10 minutes, IIRC. (They've been performing maintenance work throughout the week.)

Thanks.

Edited May 1, 2025 by lagarto_san
Typos and add details

[ebr 16169]

Are you sure the phone didn't actually lose the wifi connection as well.  It is possible it was accessing your server via the cell network and, thus, using the external address.

I cannot find an error in the log that would be related.  It looks like there is continuous playback from about 1:30 until 6:30.  What time zone is your server in?

[lagarto_san 7]

5 hours ago, ebr said:

Are you sure the phone didn't actually lose the wifi connection as well.  It is possible it was accessing your server via the cell network and, thus, using the external address.

I cannot find an error in the log that would be related.  It looks like there is continuous playback from about 1:30 until 6:30.  What time zone is your server in?

I'm sure I didn't lose connection to the wifi; I could still access other devices/services in my LAN without issues. My phone doesn't switch to cell network automatically; I have to disconnect from the wifi manually to access the WAN, but even if I did, my media server isn't exposed to the WAN anyway. But that does raise a question: Does the client try to access LAN resources via WAN behind my back? If so, is it also transmitting credentials and whatnot that way?..

I'm in the America/Denver timezone, i.e. UTC-6 right now due to DST. My timeframe was just an estimate; I didn't look at my watch when I ran into the issue. Sorry that I can't be more precise on this.

I did notice several error reports in the log; do they seem unrelated to you? Or maybe this particular error is not being logged by the server for some reason?

[ebr 16169]

14 hours ago, lagarto_san said:

Or maybe this particular error is not being logged by the server for some reason?

If the error isn't in the server log it could be because the request never got to the server - hence my question about connectivity.  I cannot find that error in your log.

14 hours ago, lagarto_san said:

Does the client try to access LAN resources via WAN behind my back?

I wouldn't call it "behind your back" but the app will try and find a usable route to your server.  If the defined local route is not working, it will try a remote one - if there is one.  This is how the app can continue on when, for instance, you start something at your house and then leave and go somewhere.  You don't have to re-connect to your server in that instance.  The app just figures it out.

[Luke 42077]

@lagarto_sandoes this help answer your questions?

[lagarto_san 7]

7 hours ago, Luke said:

@lagarto_sandoes this help answer your questions?

Only partially. It seems there's no information on the system regarding what caused the original error or why.

Regarding finding a usable route, I'm not clear on whether the client tries to go outside the LAN to find a route through the WAN back into the LAN server, which I'd consider unexpected, especially if/when not using HTTPS for it, by nature of it being isolated from the WAN.

Regarding Brave Browser behavior I had mentioned, where it ceases to play some songs, do I still need to post a new issue or would that be considered related with the data here? I'm not sure I'd have different data to post/show.

[ebr 16169]

3 hours ago, lagarto_san said:

I'm not clear on whether the client tries to go outside the LAN to find a route through the WAN back into the LAN server, which I'd consider unexpected, especially if/when not using HTTPS for it, by nature of it being isolated from the WAN.

You control this in your server configuration.  If you don't allow/define external access for your server, then the apps won't use it.

Also, most routers don't allow loopback (what you described) by default so it wouldn't work anyway.   You were on a phone though and phones are designed to do the very same thing - if the Wifi connection wasn't reachable, it would likely try via the cellular network without your knowledge or intervention.

[lagarto_san 7]

So, given that config, would that help narrow down a possible cause for the reported error?

[ebr 16169]

5 hours ago, lagarto_san said:

So, given that config, would that help narrow down a possible cause for the reported error?

My suspicion is still that local access was not possible.  The app log from the time the error occurred may shed some light but I'm sure that is long gone by now.  You could try and reproduce the issue though.

[lagarto_san 7]

On 5/5/2025 at 7:42 AM, ebr said:

My suspicion is still that local access was not possible.  The app log from the time the error occurred may shed some light but I'm sure that is long gone by now.  You could try and reproduce the issue though.

I did try to reproduce the issue a day or two later, but wasn't able to. AFAIK, there're no logs for the client side of the app, right? (The app settings show the server logs, but client(?) logs are empty.) I'd be more inclined to agree, if the phone had been unable to access other devices within the same network, but that wasn't the case. Looks like there's not much more that can be done about this here.

There're cases where the client-side app has behaved in ways that seem like it just crashed. It'll be streaming music, and then it just stops, as if the user had closed the app. I've seen that happen sometimes while playing music from a playlist, maybe a few hours into it. No idea of how to reproduce the issue, though.