Moving Plex from Core to Scale

[oumpa31]

I am working on testing everything I need out of plex on Scale and once I figure out the PCIE Nvidia transcoding I plan on moving on from Core to Scale. I share my plex with a bunch of people and I have a ton of movies and TV series that I really dont want to loose where i have watched till. I know to make a back up of my current Plex i need to use this line
cp -Ripv -f /mnt/Plugins-VM/iocage/jails/Plex/root/Plex\ Media\ Server/ /mnt/Back-Ups/Plex_Backup/Plex\ Media\ Server/

but to move it to the new docker I just want to make sure that i can use this line and this is the proper place to move it

cp -Ripv -f /mnt/Back-Ups/Plex_Backup/Plex\ Media\ Server/ /mnt/Plugins-VM/ix-applications/releases/plex/volumes/ix_volumes/ix-plex_config/Library/Application Support/Plex\ Media\ Server

 

[Kris Moore]

I am working on testing everything I need out of plex on Scale and once I figure out the PCIE Nvidia transcoding I plan on moving on from Core to Scale. I share my plex with a bunch of people and I have a ton of movies and TV series that I really dont want to loose where i have watched till. I know to make a back up of my current Plex i need to use this line
cp -Ripv -f /mnt/Plugins-VM/iocage/jails/Plex/root/Plex\ Media\ Server/ /mnt/Back-Ups/Plex_Backup/Plex\ Media\ Server/

but to move it to the new docker I just want to make sure that i can use this line and this is the proper place to move it

cp -Ripv -f /mnt/Back-Ups/Plex_Backup/Plex\ Media\ Server/ /mnt/Plugins-VM/ix-applications/releases/plex/volumes/ix_volumes/ix-plex_config/Library/Application Support/Plex\ Media\ Server

That approach will probably work. In my case I made a dedicated host dataset for my plex config and copied my data into there instead.

 

[oumpa31]

So I could make a folder somewhere and copy it all there and then just map it to the " Enable Host Path for Plex Config Volume " location in the container and it will read everything as long as I add the Plex user to that folder?

I'm very new to docker so this really is a leaning process.

 

[Kris Moore]

So I could make a folder somewhere and copy it all there and then just map it to the " Enable Host Path for Plex Config Volume " location in the container and it will read everything as long as I add the Plex user to that folder?

I'm very new to docker so this really is a leaning process.

No worries! Yes, in my case I made a dataset like this:

/mnt/tank/plex-config

I then "Enable Host Path for Plex Config Volume" and point it at that dataset.

Inside that dataset I made sure my "Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server" directory exists and is populated with the contents from my previous BSD installation.

I have them set to UID/GID 1000:1000 on the host, which is what the Plex container expects:

# chown -R 1000:1000 /mnt/tank/plex-config/Library

 

[oumpa31]

I have a Plex folder that houses all my media that is separated into movies tv and such folders I figured out how to point that to " Host Path for Plex Data Volume * " I'm guessing the names of those folders have to match the ones in the current Plex Core setup.

I'm not really sure what your mean by this last part
I have them set to UID/GID 1000:1000 on the host, which is what the Plex container expects:

# chown -R 1000:1000 /mnt/tank/plex-config/Library

Is that like having the Plex User able to read write and modify?

 

[Kris Moore]

I have a Plex folder that houses all my media that is separated into movies tv and such folders I figured out how to point that to " Host Path for Plex Data Volume * " I'm guessing the names of those folders have to match the ones in the current Plex Core setup.

I'm not really sure what your mean by this last part
I have them set to UID/GID 1000:1000 on the host, which is what the Plex container expects:

# chown -R 1000:1000 /mnt/tank/plex-config/Library

Is that like having the Plex User able to read write and modify?

I'm only talking about the configuration volume here, data volume you have some more flexibility with regard to permissions.

For config volume you want to ensure the 1000:1000 UID/GID properly, so that plex service has permissions to manage its configuration files and database.


But to answer your original question, yes, you'd try and have the media volumes mounted into the container in the same way the Plex Core setup was done. In my case I did similar, I had them mounted to /data inside my Plugin, and then did a host path mount to /data again on SCALE.

 

[oumpa31]

Awesome thanks for the info. I'm still working on getting my P4000 to do the transcoding of the video so hopefully soon i can get that working so i can move to Scale fully.

 

[Kris Moore]

Awesome thanks for the info. I'm still working on getting my P4000 to do the transcoding of the video so hopefully soon i can get that working so i can move to Scale fully.

Ahh, good to know. One of our devs was just testing the nvidia transcode today and looks like we got it working. If you update to the nightly images in the next week or so that should be all ready to go :)

 

[oumpa31]

Ahh, good to know. One of our devs was just testing the nvidia transcode today and looks like we got it working. If you update to the nightly images in the next week or so that should be all ready to go :)

Thats awesome to hear. I'm doing all this testing on a old machine so i was going to switch to the nightly this weekend to see what updates have been done for things so i'll make sure i update and keep my eyes on the update.

 

[Trexx]

Ahh, good to know. One of our devs was just testing the nvidia transcode today and looks like we got it working. If you update to the nightly images in the next week or so that should be all ready to go :)

Hi Kris,

Is the Nvidia Transcoding on the 2021.04 Master release? Does the “official” Plex App chart support NVidia transcoding or is there something special that needs to be done for that?

New to TrueNas as I am migrating most of my workloads from QNAP.

Thanks,
T.

 

[ornias]

Is the Nvidia Transcoding on the 2021.04 Master release? Does the “official” Plex App chart support NVidia transcoding or is there something special that needs to be done for that?

Did you try to do your own research before asking?
Nvidia support should be included in 21.04ALPHA. But you're talking about a master release, you mean the nightlies? It should work (tm) but nightlies break often so no guarantees there!

 

[Trexx]

Yes I tried doing my own research.

I know that NVidia hardware support is included in what I am calling the “master” or non-nightly version of 21.04 as it is listed in the developer notes. My question was does the Plex HELM chart package (included in truescale charts out of the box) already include the NVidia drivers bundled into it as they do not appear to be present in the underlying Scale ‘operating system’ as evidenced by the lack of nvidia-smi.

## Update ##
The issue with nvidia-smi being unavailable in shell is due to having enabled GPU passthrough (for VM). It might be good to add a note to the developer release notes of how to revert the change back if you want to switch GPU back to container usage.

 

[cyrus104]

When was the gpu ever passthrough in scale? I've been using 21.04 and my nvidia-smi has worked as expect. I haven't tested plex transcoding yet because I already have the performance I need from my cpu.

 

[Trexx]

When was the gpu ever passthrough in scale? I've been using 21.04 and my nvidia-smi has worked as expect. I haven't tested plex transcoding yet because I already have the performance I need from my cpu.

They talk about it in the developer release notes on 21.04 for supporting GPU passthrough for VM's.

 

[cyrus104]

ok, so do you want them to make a note that says if you are using the gpu in a vm via pass through you can’t use it for anything else?

That’s the case with almost all hypervisors.

With SCALE still bring in Alpha, I find it easy to work with documented well enough to start.

 

[oumpa31]

When was the gpu ever passthrough in scale? I've been using 21.04 and my nvidia-smi has worked as expect. I haven't tested plex transcoding yet because I already have the performance I need from my cpu.

Nvidia GPU transcoding in Plex works just fine with enabling it when you download the app.

 

[Trexx]

ok, so do you want them to make a note that says if you are using the gpu in a vm via pass through you can’t use it for anything else?

That’s the case with almost all hypervisors.

With SCALE still bring in Alpha, I find it easy to work with documented well enough to start.

I would be careful in assumptions of end-users knowledge level, especially in regards to how TrueNas has architected the platform under the covers.

For example, there are probably 4-5 users in the QNAP forums who are doing testing on using TrueNas (mainly core) on the QNAP hardware (due to QNAP's recent security/ransomeware issues). Not all of them would have that knowledge.

Having a simple note that GPU can only be used either for Passthrough (VM) or Host Shared (containers) doesn't take much, but prevents aggravation and time wasted for the users and also community when they come here asking questions about it :).

Now granted this is Alpha software so some of that comes with the territory as well and it will likely be a GUI option in Beta/Release.

 

[Trexx]

Nvidia GPU transcoding in Plex works just fine with enabling it when you download the app.

Thanks Oumpa31 for the information, I was able to get it working last night with HW transcoding.

 

[cyrus104]

I would be careful in assumptions of end-users knowledge level, especially in regards to how TrueNas has architected the platform under the covers.

For example, there are probably 4-5 users in the QNAP forums who are doing testing on using TrueNas (mainly core) on the QNAP hardware (due to QNAP's recent security/ransomeware issues). Not all of them would have that knowledge.

Having a simple note that GPU can only be used either for Passthrough (VM) or Host Shared (containers) doesn't take much, but prevents aggravation and time wasted for the users and also community when they come here asking questions about it :).

Now granted this is Alpha software so some of that comes with the territory as well and it will likely be a GUI option in Beta/Release.

I would agree that a lot of users don't always learn as much as they should up front and that a note regarding the pass through is an easy add.

The documentation for CORE is pretty good and I would guess that as SCALE moves toward Beta and Release the documentation will also evolve.

 

[Trexx]

The documentation for CORE is pretty good and Iuld guess that as SCALE moves toward Beta and Release the documentation will also evolve.

I think that is a great point that should be highlighted more in the forums for Scale, which sections/parts of Cores documentation are generally applicable vs. which things will truly be unique/different to scale. That is something I have started to use more in my short time with Scale, but not sure if it is called out in pinned topics (it could be and I just missed them is also possible).