Howdy all you fine people.
I’ve accidentally resolved my issue, but I’m left confused and was wondering if someone has any insight on what happened.
I’m posting this for two reasons.
- In the hopes that I learn something
- Perhaps someone else googling around for this issue finds this version of a resolution and it helps them save time.
Situation:
- I have a server running HexOS. Been using it to learn and serve me my media.
- The last time I had really poked my server was somewhere around the end of May. HexOS got updated and broke my GPU drivers. I guess nVidia removed support is my understanding (using GTX 1060 for transcoding). So after finding someone who performed whatever wizardry necessary to re-install the old nVidia drivers, I had to re-install Jellyfin. So it was using version 10.11.10
- After doing this, I noticed that for some reason the HexOS config modified the default ports from 8096/8920 to 30013/30014. I am functionally illiterate when it comes to networking, so I figured you they know better and simply switched over all of my interfaces to point to the new port.
- Everything was working perfectly since then.
- 7/4/2026, watched a movie without issue.
- 7/5/2026, I went and renamed some files I had noticed the day before were causing some goofy mislabeling in the interface. After renaming, Jellyfin proceeded to start creating new nfo files etc. like normal (so it was active), but when I went to verify the problem was resolved in the interface, I couldn’t reach the server.
- Opened TrueNAS dashboard, showed it perpetually deploying.
- Jellyfin had an update to 10.11.11, so I ran it. Update succeeded, but still stuck permanently deploying.
- Restarted the machine. Still stuck deploying.
- Found logs, looked at logs. Logs show successful start-up with no errors. And based on it generating metadata files, it was clearly running. And logs showed automated processes executing.
- Googled around, found people having the same issue, but it being resolved with varying degrees of “Oops, I had ports set wrong”. But, I hadn’t changed anything in over a month. So that seemed wrong. But went into TrueNAS and changed the ports back to original 8096/8920. Still stuck forever Deploying.
- Asked a robot for help. Robot mumbled crap about a corrupted system.xml file in the config so that Jellyfin regenerates it. system.xml didn’t have any of the port settings the robot claimed, and corruption seemed highly unlikely, but I had nothing to lose. And while looking through forums with users having the same problem, I knew the port settings were actually in network.xml. So I renamed both system.xml and network.xml, restarted and Yay! Jellyfin was back to working. system.xml was indeed regenerated, but network.xml was not.
- Went back to original system.xml without issue.
- So it was the network.xml file causing the issue, not system.xml. I tried a variety of robot inspired changes to the network.xml file, but none of them work. As long as there is a network.xml file present in the config folder, it seems it breaks accessing Jellyfin. Regardless of what the port settings seem to be.
I’m left very confused. I would love for someone to explain:
a) How could the problem possibly just spring up without me seemingly changing any settings, despite working just fine for over a month.
b) Even if that mystery goes unsolved; anyone have thoughts on why the HexOS team changed the default port mappings for Jellyfin? Curious what the benefit is (I’m dumb, be gentle)
c) What in the hell is network.xml doing at this point? It’s clearly not necessary for functioning, and it doesn’t get re-installed if I remove it, and yet it has to be referenced somewhere in order to cause an issue, right?
I’ve attached the network.xml file in it’s as-found state. I tried changing the Local and Internal ports to be the same, both with 8096 and 30013. No difference. Robot also suggested changing IgnoreVirtualInterfaces (no help), as well as fully removing the parameters xmlns parameters completely from NetworkConfiguration (no help).
Any input would be appreciated. I did also post on the HexOS forums.
network-bad.txt (1001 Bytes)