plex questions -multiple pools and jails?

justforplex

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Do I need to create seperate jails for seperate pools?

Do I need a seperate desitination path when creating a new mount point for the new pool/drive?

I started my nas with one drive and a plex plugin (the sole reason for my building a nas), then needed to add a drive, so...Im trying to replicate the initial setup because it didnt see the added drive.

I got the second disk put into the pool, but now I cant seem to create a second mount point for the plex plugin/jail. It refuses to accept any path other than the jail for the first disk; which when I tried to use that, it wont update the first pool files, and cant seem to see most of the second disk pool.

It would help if there existed a guide for setting up plex and its associated fingers...
 

sretalla

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Do I need to create seperate jails for seperate pools?
You can mount storage from your host to a jail. That mounted storage can come from any pool and you can make as many mounts as you want/need.

Do I need a seperate desitination path when creating a new mount point for the new pool/drive?
You can only mount one source in each destination (you can probably mount the same source in more than one destination, but I think that's not usually something you would want to do).

I started my nas with one drive and a plex plugin (the sole reason for my building a nas), then needed to add a drive
If you just want a second library path, mount it into the jail in a second location and tell plex to look at it in addition to the first one in your library.

I got the second disk put into the pool, but now I cant seem to create a second mount point for the plex plugin/jail. It refuses to accept any path other than the jail for the first disk; which when I tried to use that, it wont update the first pool files, and cant seem to see most of the second disk pool.
That's a lot of things that aren't working.

Can we start on it by getting a better view of what exactly you have tried to do? ... like iocage fstab plex -a /mnt/newtank/media/TV /Media/TV nullfs rw 0 0 or if you're doing it in the GUI, a screenshot of the setup.
 

Chris Moore

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I got the second disk put into the pool, but now I cant seem to create a second mount point for the plex plugin/jail.
I think we need a better understanding of where you are with hardware and software configuration. Please review this document to get a picture of what we need to know (as a start) to be able to help you better:
 

justforplex

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Thanks for responding.

well, I began by using a fairly new Lenovo H50-55 desktop with a decent processor, 8gb ram and a new 2tb drive. I just wanted a plex server not sharing resources with windows. This was to be dedicated to plex, only. With the help of a youtube video I installed truenas 12.1 on an old 40gb drive, as the boot drive. This would be just for the nas OS. All my media went initially on a new 2tb drive, for which I created a pool called 'tank' and a 'media' samba share. Installed plex plugin and created a jail with permissions for both movies and tv shows. Plex was working brilliantly at this point.

Later realizing my library needed more space I added another identical 2tb drive, intending to split movies and tv shows between the two drives; one drive for movies, the other for tv. I created a second pool called, TVShows, oddly enough. I added the drive as a whole new pool because it seemed the simplest way to add another drive (Im not worried about redundancy; I can download again any movie files I lose). Once I added the second drive and began migrating tv show files to it thru a new samba share, I then found I couldnt change the plex library to navigate to that new share. I thought it needed a second mount point, so the plex jail would see the new content, but in trying to create that mount point, nas asks for a destination path and it seemed to make sense that it would need to point at a location on the new drive, as Id done on the first drive. This didnt work, plex still couldnt see the new content or drive, and when I let it default to the original iocage/jail/dest path as the original drive, it worked a bit but it didnt see all files and it definitely lost a portion of the existing library. When I remove the second mount point in the plex jail, it goes back to working fine on the first drive but still wont see the second drive.

Now, Im willing to reload the nas OS on the dedicated 40gb drive for it, and start new, but will I affect my movies and tv show files negatively in some way? Has nas changed the media files themselves somehow, which would prevent a reload of nas from seeing them?

Or is there a way to adapt things so plex can see the second drive?
 

justforplex

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adding some screenshots here, as illustration...

So you can see the two seperate pools/drives, the jail and the paths for each mount point.

1611595184621.png


1611595370117.png


1611595385446.png
 

sretalla

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OK, so there's your problem in the last image...

/mnt/tank/iocage/jails/plex/root/mnt/TVShows/iocage/jails/plex/root isn't even close to something that should be there.

It should just be this:
/mnt/tank/iocage/jails/plex/root/mnt/TVShows

Then in your plex library, make it look for /mnt/TVShows.
 

Chris Moore

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From your description, it sounds as if you have two drives in a stripe set with no redundancy. This is very dangerous both from a data integrity standpoint and from the standpoint of potential disk failure. Before you bring much data into this system, you should do more discovery and redesign of the hardware plan.
 

justforplex

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OK, so there's your problem in the last image...

/mnt/tank/iocage/jails/plex/root/mnt/TVShows/iocage/jails/plex/root isn't even close to something that should be there.

It should just be this:
/mnt/tank/iocage/jails/plex/root/mnt/TVShows

Then in your plex library, make it look for /mnt/TVShows.
apologies, I explained in a prior post that when I let the tvshows mount point to the tank volume, it didnt work correctly anyway. Not sure why, but it wouldnt see more than a third of my content, and none of any content added after that. Its why I began thinking it needed a mount point referring to the tvshows volume, but cant seem to make that change either, it simply takes what I type into the path field and adds it on to the end of its default path, as you see above.
 

justforplex

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From your description, it sounds as if you have two drives in a stripe set with no redundancy. This is very dangerous both from a data integrity standpoint and from the standpoint of potential disk failure. Before you bring much data into this system, you should do more discovery and redesign of the hardware plan.
Im not worried about losing data, Im already backed up off the nas machine. If I were to purchase twice as much drivespace for redundancy sake, this whole thing would be too expensive to bother. Ive spent $100 on drives and reused a desktop box, thats as far as Im willing to go.
 

Chris Moore

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Not sure why, but it wouldnt see more than a third of my content, and none of any content added after that.
That sounds more like a permissions problem.
 

Chris Moore

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justforplex

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OK, so there's your problem in the last image...

/mnt/tank/iocage/jails/plex/root/mnt/TVShows/iocage/jails/plex/root isn't even close to something that should be there.

It should just be this:
/mnt/tank/iocage/jails/plex/root/mnt/TVShows

Then in your plex library, make it look for /mnt/TVShows.
OK, I had to reread your post more closely...I updated the path as you indicated and things are updating, appears to be adding content...will report back later. Thanks sretalla!
 

justforplex

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OK, so there's your problem in the last image...

/mnt/tank/iocage/jails/plex/root/mnt/TVShows/iocage/jails/plex/root isn't even close to something that should be there.

It should just be this:
/mnt/tank/iocage/jails/plex/root/mnt/TVShows
JFC, its now telling me the directory must be empty? It refuses to save the mount with that dest path.
 

sretalla

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JFC, its now telling me the directory must be empty? It refuses to save the mount with that dest path.
Indeed a prerequisite for mounting a directory in a jail is that the target is empty.

Because you had previously mounted it into a subdirectory of that one, it would have the old intermediate structure inside (so is not empty).

You will need to do something like this:

iocage exec plex rm -r /mnt/TVShows/iocage
 

justforplex

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excellent, thanks again sretalla. I keep plain forgetting there is more than the gui for nas. That command fails out, any idea of tweaks to that line? Ive never been much of a cmd window expert.
 
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sretalla

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That command fails out, any idea of tweaks to that line?
What's the error? is plex not the name of your jail? maybe it's plexmediaserver instead?
 

justforplex

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yes, plex is the name of my jail. It responded with no such directory exists, which is correct so I removed the "iocage" from the end of the command and it seemed to finish fine. The library is updating on the plex web interface and looks to be problem solved!
 
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