So we needed to proxy our plex server through another box. That part was easy enough with a nice little ncat socket running on the proxy:

ncat -k -l 32400 –sh-exec “ncat server.com 32400”

Now we can access through the proxy address proxy.com:32400/web which is great and all.
However, to get our devices/plexweb to use the new address, some kung fu’ery is needed.

Basically, your PMS install goes out and uses plex servers to figure out its external ip address. Hence tricking this into using another ip address could require some sort of vpn tunnel of all external traffic since PMS needs to contact through the proxy for that IP to be applied.

Or, you can do the following:

  1. Install PMS on the proxy, don’t worry this is temporary. 2. Sign out of myplex on your server. 3. Start the PMS on the proxy. 4. Link your proxy with your myplex. 5. Stop PMS on the proxy. Copy your Preferences.xml from your server install to your proxy install. This file is located here: “/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Preferences.xml” 6. Start your PMS on the proxy (now with the new Preferences.xml file) 7. Your server should show up on Plexweb. Now stop PMS on the proxy. 8. Start the ncat socket on the proxy. 9. Now, when going to the server entry on plexweb, it should show as your proxy IP and you should be able to use it just like normal. Note that your “sections” may not display correctly however you can still share them all out no problem.
  • Remember to stay signed out of myplex on the actual server.
Mario Loria is a builder of diverse infrastructure with modern workloads on both bare-metal and cloud platforms. He's traversed roles in system administration, network engineering, and DevOps. You can learn more about him here.