Possible fix for age verification / incomplete galleries / 404 errors (VPN split tunneling)
I was running into some of the same issues others have mentioned here, including galleries only loading a handful of images (sometimes just 3â4), age verification problems, and 404 Client Error messages in the Stash logs.
The strange part was that opening those exact same galleries directly in my browser worked perfectly, with no age verification prompt and all images available.
I managed to resolve it by routing the Python executable Stash uses through my VPN.
Iâm running Stash on Windows, and I use VPN split tunneling to route Firefox through my VPN while other applications use my normal connection. What I hadnât considered was that the plugin makes its requests through Python, which was bypassing my VPN entirely.
Hereâs what worked for me:
1. Find your Python executable path.
Open PowerShell and run:
py -c "import sys; print(sys.executable)"
If you have multiple Python installations, you can also check them with:
py -0p
2. Configure Stash to use that executable.
Go to Settings â System â Application Paths â Python Executable Path, enter the full path to python.exe, save, and restart Stash.
3. Add that same executable to your VPNâs split tunneling rules.
Configure your VPN to route that specific python.exe through the VPN rather than your normal connection.
4. Reload Stash and try the plugin again.
After doing this, galleries that previously only returned a few images started loading correctly.
A couple of interesting things I found while troubleshooting:
I tested the pluginâs scraper directly through Python against a gallery that was only returning 3 images.
The scraper successfully retrieved the page and reported Age gate: False, but the actual HTML contained only 3 image references. So the plugin wasnât overlooking the remaining images; they simply werenât being served to Python.
I also investigated the 404 errors for /plugin/stash-ppics/assets/cache/*.json and found that some of those files were being created shortly afterward. Those errors may just be related to the UI polling for results before theyâre ready, rather than indicating a problem themselves.
My suspicion is that PornPics serves different gallery content depending on the requesting IP/location, sometimes without presenting an actual age verification page. That would also explain why the developer in the Netherlands might not be able to reproduce the issue.
@sashi @goldstarZV @bprpi â Tagging you guys since some of the symptoms you reported sounded similar to what I was experiencing. Iâm not sure whether the underlying cause is the same, especially with the 404 errors, but this completely resolved the gallery restrictions on my end.
Hopefully this helps someone else! It might also be worth looking into how the plugin detects age-restricted galleries, since the scraper can apparently receive a partially restricted gallery without recognizing that anything is wrong.
Did you also found the issue with the selection being wiped?