SOLVED Where do you run Plex, and why?

[Samuel Tai]

I run Plex as a Docker container inside a hand-rolled RancherOS 1.5.5 VM on bhyve. The one big drawback is no hardware transcoding (even though the Docker container supports it), as my CPU doesn't have QuickSync and bhyve doesn't support the Linux kernel DRM interfaces for the container. On the plus side, LyricFind works, and Plex upgrades (using the plexinc/pms-docker: public image) are incredibly easy (docker restart plex). I serve my media to the plex Docker container via NFS.

Under FreeNAS 9, I originally ran Plex as a plugin, but got frustrated that upgrades required upstream repackaging into a jail, and the FreeBSD implementation always felt like a second-class citizen to the Plex developers.

 

[hervon]

Iocage jail. No issue. Low CPU/RAM footprint.

 

[Yorick]

In an iocage jail, with hw transcode. Easy Peasy, no muss no fuss.

 

[jgreco]

Plex on FreeBSD works fine and is just a matter of extracting a new tarball when a new version comes out, and changing a symlink (assuming you want to keep the old copy available as a rollback option).

Pop it on a bare metal box, or a hypervisor VM, NFS mount your NAS, done.

 

[Basil Hendroff]

Have a look at @danb35 's Scripted Plex installation resource for FreeNAS. It addresses the plugin issues you've experienced. For h/w transcoding, follow this thread https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/activating-plex-hardware-acceleration.75391/ (@Yorick wondering if this should be converted to a resource or is it not ready for prime time yet?).

 

[Yorick]

@Basil Hendroff I wouldn't convert that thread to a resource, and given the issues with devfs in 11.3, I think waiting for 12.0 to be out makes sense. At that point it'll be stable across jail restarts, at least.

 

[jon_2112]

Plex on FreeBSD works fine and is just a matter of extracting a new tarball when a new version comes out, and changing a symlink (assuming you want to keep the old copy available as a rollback option).

Pop it on a bare metal box, or a hypervisor VM, NFS mount your NAS, done.

I installed it using pkg in an iocage jail and have been relying on repository updates, which lag by some time. Is it as simple as downloading the new version and replacing everything in the program directory? I might try that out.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Been running it in a jail for 6 years now. No issues and think it's a great solution. Keep it simple.

 

[anmnz]

I run the pkg in a jail like many others. Have done for years. Updates and from-scratch jail rebuilds handled with Ansible. These days most of my stuff is in Kubernetes on small VMs under FreeNAS but I want Plex to be able to just grab lots of CPU cores if it has a lot of transcoding to do, and that's easier in a jail.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I don't run Plex and I found Plex and all other "media server" solutions I have come across utterly inadequate. I don't swap around movies I got "somewhere from the net" but I rip my own DVDs and then meticulously tag them. So all the metadata is *in my media files*. There's is an ID3 based semi-standard for video files that e.g. iTunes uses.
Instead of using the data that is already in there, all these media servers reach out to "the net" to download arbitrary garbage. Worst incident: loading metadata for the 2000's Battlestar Galactica series when I put the 1980's original series on my server.

So I ditched all of these products and simply set up a file share. And then there's the "Infuse" app for TV OS and iOS that can mount a share and display embedded metadata. I wholeheartedly recommend this product.

For my son to watch Game of Thrones while he was in England on student exchange, I shared the same dataset via our family Nextcloud. You can even play the videos right in the browser in Nextcloud.

Don't know if this helps anyone, but possibly there are more people like me who get annoyed by software that tries to outsmart the user. I prefer "do as I tell you - exactly" systems ;)

Kind regards
Patrick

 

[sretalla]

Instead of using the data that is already in there, all these media servers reach out to "the net" to download arbitrary garbage.

I'm not sure you were setting the library agents correctly in plex if that's the case... it can certainly be configured to look only at the media for information.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Well, it couldn't two or three years ago when I last tried ;) I found a plugin or two but these looked at the file names (of all things) to deduce information. Additional data was to be put into separate files in the matching directory. I have everything in ID3 tags including cover art, episode summary, actors, director ...

 

[jon_2112]

I don't run Plex and I found Plex and all other "media server" solutions I have come across utterly inadequate. I don't swap around movies I got "somewhere from the net" but I rip my own DVDs and then meticulously tag them. So all the metadata is *in my media files*. There's is an ID3 based semi-standard for video files that e.g. iTunes uses.
Instead of using the data that is already in there, all these media servers reach out to "the net" to download arbitrary garbage. Worst incident: loading metadata for the 2000's Battlestar Galactica series when I put the 1980's original series on my server.

So I ditched all of these products and simply set up a file share. And then there's the "Infuse" app for TV OS and iOS that can mount a share and display embedded metadata. I wholeheartedly recommend this product.

For my son to watch Game of Thrones while he was in England on student exchange, I shared the same dataset via our family Nextcloud. You can even play the videos right in the browser in Nextcloud.

Don't know if this helps anyone, but possibly there are more people like me who get annoyed by software that tries to outsmart the user. I prefer "do as I tell you - exactly" systems ;)

Kind regards
Patrick

Yeah, you used Plex (or Emby or whatever else you used) very incorrectly. I'm happy for you that your solution works well, but you're missing out on a ton of functionality, not the least of which are transcoding, filters, actor information, automatic metadata (being able to search by studio or director, for example). Want a list of all the Disney movies you haven't watched yet? Just a couple of clicks. What about sorting your movies by IMDB rating? How about sorting *just unwatched* movies by IMDB rating, then filtering for only comedies? What if you just ripped that movie in 4K and want to watch it from Belize while on vacation? You might have a gigabit upload connection at home, but you probably don't have enough bandwidth in the hotel to stream it - Plex can transcode it to 4 Mbps for good quality in less-than-ideal link situations where Nextcloud simply wouldn't work.

Your Battlestar Galactica problem is fixed by simply hitting "fix match" and selecting Battlestar Galactica (1978) in the list that pops up.

And on top of that, coming into a thread where someone asks how you run Plex and saying, essentially, that you're too smart for Plex (and supporting the claim with an anecdotal problem that is trivially easy to fix) is really pretty lame.

 

[Yorick]

I installed it using pkg in an iocage jail and have been relying on repository updates, which lag by some time.

Did you go to latest, or are you using the default quarterly? If the latter, change that.

Code:

mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos
cp /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos
ee /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf

and change "quarterly" in the URL to "latest", mine looks like this: url: "pkg+http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/latest",

While you're at it, crontab -e and something like this to check for updates on Sunday: 18 3 * * 0 pkg upgrade -y && service plexmediaserver restart

That assumes plexmediaserver, not plexmediaserver-plexpass, which is the beta version. I wouldn't auto-upgrade beta code.

 

[jon_2112]

Did you go to latest, or are you using the default quarterly? If the latter, change that.

Code:

mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos
cp /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos
ee /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf

and change "quarterly" in the URL to "latest", mine looks like this: url: "pkg+http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/latest",

While you're at it, crontab -e and something like this to check for updates on Sunday: 18 3 * * 0 pkg upgrade -y && service plexmediaserver restart

That assumes plexmediaserver, not plexmediaserver-plexpass, which is the beta version. I wouldn't auto-upgrade beta code.

I have the repository set to latest, and have a cron job to go in and run an update once a week. The repository is perpetually a version or two behind the latest release, though.

I went and did a manual upgrade and it seemed to work just fine.

 

[Yorick]

The repository is perpetually a version or two behind the latest release, though.

More power to you, and, a version or two behind really isn't a big deal. It can't possibly be that urgent.

 

[SweetAndLow]

I have the repository set to latest, and have a crib job to go in and run an update once a week. The repository is perpetually a version or two behind the latest release, though.

I went and did a manual upgrade and it seemed to work just fine.

The repository is not behind by a couple releases. Please don't spread lies. It's only behind by 3 days usually. The time it takes to roll a new package and build the ports

 

[Yorick]

The repository is not behind by a couple releases. Please don't spread lies.

Yo, buddy, chill. The word “lie” is not appropriate in this context. Nor the insinuation that someone is spreading those. We’re discussing our experience with a piece of tech.

I can say that I am set to latest, and pkg still thinks that dot one is the release, when dot three has been out for two weeks now. That may be a quirk of the packaging system, or maybe it’s genuinely not available yet.

 

[danb35]

The repository is not behind by a couple releases.

The statement was "a release or two", and it's often true--Plex releases very rapidly, and the packages are often (maybe "usually") a little behind--at this moment, the "latest" package repo doesn't have a release (1.19.3.2764) that came out 11 days ago. I'm not sure why Jon's accurate statement resulted in such a strong reaction from you, though.

The real issue is the pathological desire of Plex users to be on the latest possible release, all the time.

 

[Samuel Tai]

I wouldn't say the desire to be on the latest is pathological. Every release, the Plex devels fix some sort of media handling/transcoding bug, and there's a large enough population affected that upgrading is a reasonable thing to do. Various security fixes get bundled in as well.

With my setup, upgrading is a non-issue. I just restart my Docker container, and it automatically pulls the latest release. No script gyrations necessary.