New Plugin Available: Plex Media Server!

[jkh]

There is a new port of the latest version of Plex Media Server.

plexmediaserver 0.9.8.18.290

http://www.freshports.org/multimedia/plexmediaserver/

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Thanks! #3793 filed to track this.

 

[BatterseaPS]

There is a new port of the latest version of Plex Media Server.

plexmediaserver 0.9.8.18.290

http://www.freshports.org/multimedia/plexmediaserver/

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Thanks.

I'm a very "light" FreeNAS user and new to NASs in general. I used the built-in plugin installer to get Plexmediaserver 0.9.8.14.263.
I'd like the new version to see if it helps Chromecast streaming (which is very choppy at the moment), but I don't know how to install it from the freshports site, or what those pkg-plist files are in general. Is there a newbie guide somewhere?

 

[benamira]

Thanks.

I'm a very "light" FreeNAS user and new to NASs in general. I used the built-in plugin installer to get Plexmediaserver 0.9.8.14.263.
I'd like the new version to see if it helps Chromecast streaming (which is very choppy at the moment), but I don't know how to install it from the freshports site, or what those pkg-plist files are in general. Is there a newbie guide somewhere?

My advice would be to wait until the plugin is updated. It will appear in the GUI and probably it will be communicated here in the forums.
But take into consideration that the update process is not very mature right now. There are some bugs opened and there is high risk to lose the DB (i haven't read any posts of successful update keeping the DB), and it will force you to reconfigure and rescan your library.

 

[BatterseaPS]

My advice would be to wait until the plugin is updated. It will appear in the GUI and probably it will be communicated here in the forums.
But take into consideration that the update process is not very mature right now. There are some bugs opened and there is high risk to lose the DB (i haven't read any posts of successful update keeping the DB), and it will force you to reconfigure and rescan your library.

Thanks. Yeah, luckily I'm starting my Plex library over from scratch so I haven't imported everything yet; it's relatively small. So when the new GUI install is available, I'll delete it and reinstall the new one.

In the meantime... I have been having problems with switching some extensions to ON, namely Plex itself and Crashplan. It keeps telling me "some error occurred." I guess I'll be off to the support forums.

 

[Magnus33]

The plex plugin been updated but if you got a big database i don't recommend clicking the update button.

It may work for small databases but its presently safer to uninstall and then install the new one.

 

[marian78]

Hi, thx for your work. Is there any link to directly download this updated PBI ? Thx.

EDIT: Ok, I've found links.... ( http://www.freenas.org/downloads/plugins/9/x64/ )

 

[benamira]

Also you can install directly from the FreeNAS GUI, under Plugins, the Plex Media Server is already updated to 0.9.8.18.290 version.

 

[elementalwindx]

I got plex going but it looks like it does not use upnp to open ports on my firewall for the my plex services (port 32400). I manually added the port in my router but it still cannot work properly. Is there something in this jailing system I need to do? I've setup the gateway in the jail to match the gateway of everything else on my network.

 

[marian78]

Thx for your tip. Next time i will use update button. ;)

 

[jkh]

I got plex going but it looks like it does not use upnp to open ports on my firewall for the my plex services (port 32400). I manually added the port in my router but it still cannot work properly. Is there something in this jailing system I need to do? I've setup the gateway in the jail to match the gateway of everything else on my network.

There's nothing special about jails. The port needs to be unblocked for the IP configured for the plex jail. This will not happen automatically, as you've deduced, it has to be done manually in your router configuration. If it's still blocked, you somehow didn't get the configuration in your router right.

 

[benamira]

Thx for your tip. Next time i will use update button. ;)

I don't think this is a good idea.. as the update process is currently broken. Sorry if i didn't explained very well.. :(
There are some bugs opened and freenas guys are currently working on it.
The link in the GUI is ok for a fresh installation, delete the old one, and install the new one from scratch.

So the correct tip would be: "Update this plugin is not recommended right now until the bugs are resolved in future version"

 

[Magnus33]

Keep in mind deleting the old plex plugin and installing the new one means you start from the beginning.
Your going to need to add your shares and set things up all over again.

Ok for smaller setups but a pain for the much larger ones.
There also waiting for them to fix the upgrade process as they are quite good at this :)

 

[kuruption]

Is there a way to backup the plex server DB, recreate the jail, and then restore the backed up DB to the new instance? This may help alleviate some of the current "upgrade nightmare" being talked about. :D

 

[cyberjock]

Yes. Several people have provided instructions for doing it. I'd provide a link if I had one. :(

 

[Rick Johnson]

I found that tarring up $PLEXJAIL/usr/pbi/plexmediaserver-amd64/plexdata, deleting old plex install/jail, reinstalling plex, recreating media mount point, and restoring the tar archive of plexdata within $PLEXJAIL/usr/pbi/plexmediaserver-amd64/ worked fine.

In my case, the gzip-compressed tarball was 3.3GB (tarball is 3.9GB uncompressed), and contained 388889 files and directories.

Note: using tar instead of cp preserves ownership and extended attributes, if any. There won't be any need to chown the directory as the previous example stated.

In my example, the ZFS volume used will be zfsvolume, thus the location for the jail would be /mnt/zfsvolume/jails/plexmediaserver_1. Your system will likely vary. Change the paths in the commands below to match your own use-case. To simplify, I'll reference this path in my examples as $PLEXJAIL.

1. Stop the Plex plugin from the FreeNAS GUI so that existing files/directories do not change during this process and open file locks are released.
2. From a root shell (via GUI, or ssh + "sudo su -"), create a tar archive of the Plex database directory. I used the following approach, which took 10-15 minutes to complete (you can use bzip or xzip, but I wanted a known-fast compression over smaller):
cd $PLEXJAIL/usr/pbi/plexmediaserver-amd64/
tar cvfz /mnt/zfsvolume/plexdata.tar.gz plexdata
3. Close the shell (or cd out of the jail so that deleting the jail does not fail)
4. Delete the existing Plex plugin using the FreeNAS GUI.
5. Reinstall Plex using the FreeNAS GUI.
6. Recreate the media mount point in the newly recreated Plex jail, pointing to the /media directory within the jail (see Plex install instructions for this).
7. From a root shell, restore the tar archive. I used the following approach (restoring is much faster than archiving):
cd $PLEXJAIL/usr/pbi/plexmediaserver-amd64/
tar xvfz /mnt/zfsvolume/plexdata.tar.gz
8. Start the Plex plugin from the FreeNAS GUI. If you experience the 500 error in FreeNAS 9.2.0 like I do, just reboot the server before starting Plex.
9. Verify that everything is working by accessing the Plex UI. Existing media and preferences should be present. Once confirmed, delete the backup tar archive from a root shell (remember, root owns it):
rm /mnt/zfsvolume/plexdata.tar.gz

 

[Cschutte]

Thanks Rick. I do something similar, but instead of steps 4,5,6, I download the Plex pbi to my desktop, and then upload it into the existing Plex jail with the gui. I guess the upload overwrites all the necessary files in the jail (it does take a bit of time). I then restore plexdata. This saves me from recreating the mount points, IP address etc.
I just upgraded to the latest Plex yesterday.

 

[NaCl]

Greetings,

I am using this plugin version as well w/FreeNAS-9.2.0-RELEASE-x64 (ab098f4) and was curious if anyone's run into an issue with disabling remote security option getting 'stuck' or at least the unchecking of it, e.g. reenablement of remote security, not actually working?

I ended up checking the box trying to diag another issue, resolved that, and then unchecked it. Now whenever I go to http://myexternalip:32400/web, while not on my internal network, I'm immediately allowed into to the thing. Even on browsers that I've never logged in from before. How do I 'fix' this?

I've attached a picture of the dialog I'm talking about for clarity.

Thanks!

 

[Wolfeman0101]

Thanks Rick. I do something similar, but instead of steps 4,5,6, I download the Plex pbi to my desktop, and then upload it into the existing Plex jail with the gui. I guess the upload overwrites all the necessary files in the jail (it does take a bit of time). I then restore plexdata. This saves me from recreating the mount points, IP address etc.

I just upgraded to the latest Plex yesterday.

Can you explain your 4-6 more?

 

[Rick Johnson]

Can you explain your 4-6 more?

I could, but it's more or less a repeat of the initial installation instructions.

 

[benamira]

There are good news...
According to the bugs.freenas site:

The plex upgrade issue has been addressed and a resolution found. The configuration database directory is set aside while upgrading and restored once the upgrade is complete. This feature will be available in the 9.2.1 BETA and 9.2.1 RELEASE.

https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/3757#change-12563