Installed plex via jail creation and plugin, can't find media

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teldar

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Apr 11, 2018
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So I've been fighting this for some time.

I tried to create iocage jails per this guide and got an absolute disaster of a file structure which took forever to get rid of and I just don't understand how to do it properly. I've tried that one literally about 10 times and just don't get it. I don't know *nix much at all and certainly don't know how to point to the right file structure I'm looking for.

So I went back to this, (should have said this is 11.1 plugin installation) which I had gotten to work completely once, including serving a movie over the network to my phone at a transcoded resolution. I was having problems and restarted everything again, went back and reinstalled as per his instructions, but I can't figure out how to get plex to look at my media directory. Everything I tried said there was no media in the folder.

I found this and did everything from here and again, Plex starts right up, but I can't figure out how to point it to my media folders. If I put my media INSIDE the jail, it works. But I don't want my media in the jail. If i delete the jail, I don't want to lose my media.

My file structure is /mnt/Endless/Shared/Media/... I'll have a Music, Movies, and TV Shows folder. Music will be further branched into Artist and Album folders. Tv Shows will be Series and Seasons folders. Movies will be in their own folders with art work and MY Movies (plugin app from MediaCenter PC) .xml file. Permissions for my storage are plex: plex, user ID 972, unix permissions 777. SMB share shows up fine on the network. Jail storage is /mnt/Endless/Shared/Media. In Plex when adding a Library, I type in /media/Music and I'm told there is no media in the library.

I'm at wit's end trying to figure out why I cannot get this to work a second time. I would imagine my problem is permissions, but I don't know where I'm going wrong at this point.
 

teldar

Dabbler
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Apr 11, 2018
Messages
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So through playing with plex and moving files, I've found that plex will only look in the top level shared folder. I've got the storage for the jail set to /mnt/Endless/Shared/Media and this is the only folder it will look in. When I go into Plex to add a library and type /media it will pick up anything in that folder. If I type in /media/Movies to mimic my tree in freenas, it will not look in the Movies folder on my server. Any thoughts? I really don't want hundreds of movies and thousands of songs without any file structure what so ever.
 

SavageAUS

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Jul 9, 2016
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418
Your mount point in the jail should be something like <jail>/root/media/movies and your dataset like this /mnt/endless/media/movies and so forth for different media types. And in plex you won’t be able to browse for you media type you have to manually type it in like /media/movies. Hope this helps.


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teldar

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Apr 11, 2018
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My jail storage source is /mnt/Endless/Shared/Media. The destination is /mnt/Endless/jails/plexmediaserver_1/media. There are subfolders that match Music, Movies, and TV Shows in my source tree of /mnt/Endless/Shared/Media... . These folders in the jail should just be for metadata for the media files, to my understanding.

Inside of plex, when I go to add a library, music for example, I select Music, leave the library name as Music, delete the supplied location string from /var/db/plexdata/Plex Media Server and type in /media/Music. From my understanding the /media should point to /mnt/Endless/Shared/Media as specified in the jail and the /Music should point it into the Music folder. But it doesn't do this.

The only way I can get plex to see media files is if in Plex when adding the library I just type /media and put the music files just dumped into /mnt/Endless/Shared/Media.

Should I be adding multiple storage locations in the jail, one for each media type? Have one storage location of /mnt/Endless/Shared/Media/Music, one jail storage location of /mnt/Endless/Shared/Media/Movies, and a third one of /mnt/Endless/Shared/Media/TV Shows? This was not the way i did it when I got it to work initially. I believe I had the same file structure and just left my storage location as /mnt/Endless/Shared/Media and typed in /media/Movies for Movies, /media/Music for Music and /media/TV Shows for shows.
 
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SavageAUS

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Jul 9, 2016
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418
Should I be adding multiple storage locations in the jail, one for each media type?
That is how I do it. Mount all media types individually to the jail.


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teldar

Dabbler
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Apr 11, 2018
Messages
18
I deleted my storage in my jail for plex and added storage sources of /mnt/Endless/Shared/Media/Movies, /mnt/Endless/Shared/Media/Music, and /mnt/Endless/Shared/Media/TV Shows.

I then went back into Plex and added a Library of Movies and just typed /media and it seems to be finding my movies alright. I'll move some files around and check Music tomorrow.

Thanks
 

teldar

Dabbler
Joined
Apr 11, 2018
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18
I had been creating the entire file tree in Freenas. What I should have done was create only the main shared media folder in freenas and create the subfolders in the Windows share. I removed two layers in freenas and now only have /mnt/Endless/Shared. In Windows, in the shared folder I have my media folders of Music and Movies (these have worked so far). I'll probably add a layer to my tree in Freenas and have /mnt/Endless/Shared/Media so I can add other folders such as /mnt/Endless/Shared/Pics, Docs, Files, Scans....
 
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