Plex brings together all the media that matters to you, organizing your personal collections alongside stellar online content, streaming music, and more, making it all look beautiful in one universal interface.
Plex uses the Media Server to organize and give access to your media files, the Plex client to access the media content, and the Plex Central Server to store details of your Plex account. But there is a fourth player, that is as important, the Seedbox. Short video on how to install manual update of Plex.tv onto a QNAP Qnas device.Example device shown here: http://amzn.to/2wZEvr2.
It can be frustrating not being able to update Plex through the GUI like you can on Windows installs.
The easiest way to upgrade Plex on FreeNas is to execute it through the jail.
How to Installing Plex Media Server on FreeNas 11.2
The guide below is the general overview of you to upgrade and run Plex Media Server on FreeNas, I recommend watching the video below to make the instructions make sense.
Here are the manual instructions on how to logon and check for Plex media server updates:
SSH to your FreeNas Server and logon
jls (To give you a list of Jails)
jexec # (Number of your Jail)
pkg update && pkg upgrade -y (To Search for updates and install)
If there are any updates available they will be installed automatically. After any upgrade to your Plex Media Server package you must restart Plex media server service with the following for your upgrade to take affect:
# service plexmediaserver restart
or
# service plexmediaserver_plexpass restart
Marked at the time index where i use the
pkg update && pkg upgrade -y (To Search for updates and install)
Upgrading Plex can be a frustrating thing when you first look at it, but this process you will find easy and will save you time.
For other FreeNAS related tutorials on my website please click here.
Also please have a look at my YouTube Channel and subscribe for video tutorials as they are released, and if you have any advice for others, requests or questions please leave a comment below.
Installing Plex Media Server on your FreeNas server is an absolute essential. Plex is a digital media player and organizational tool that allows you to access the music, pictures, and videos stored on one computer with any other computer, set top device or compatible mobile device. The Plex Media Server is the core of your PVR setup here and will provide all the media that you are ripping, downloading, etc to all of your clients. It will serve, and transcode as necessary based on the client devices requirements, all your movies, TV shows, music personal videos and more.
This article will show you how to install Plex Media Server on your FreeNAS system, without using the standard FreeNAS plugin interface and will instruct you on how to update your install your Plex Media Server to the latest version. You may want to setup Plex after you have setup some of your automated downloading agents which you can read about how to setup in my Sonarr, Radarr, Jackett, Qbittorrent, OpenVPN and other FreeNAS articles on this site.
UPDATE: I have updated this article for TrueNAS and you can read the TrueNAS: Plex Manual Install article and the TrueNAS: Update Plex Server article from the links provided.
Install Plex Media Server
There are two versions of Plex to install – the PlexPass version and thebasic version if you don’t have a PlexPass. Go to the command line interface for the jail in which you want to install Plex and enter one of the two following commands.
If you don’t have a PlexPass, use this command to install:pkg install plexmediaserver
If you do have a PlexPass, use this command to install
pkg install plexmediaserver-plexpass
Automatic Start
We will need to set Plex to start automatically. It’s pretty simple, all you need to do is run the following command:
sysrc 'plexmediaserver-plexpass_enable=YES' rosysrc 'plexmediaserver_enable=YES'
I have my Plex server being run by the root user so that I can be sure that there is access to files and I am able to delete files from my Plex interface. So I edit the /usr/local/etc/rc.d/plexmediaserverfile and change:
from
: ${plexmediaserver_user=”plex”}
: ${plexmediaserver_group=”plex”}
to:
: ${plexmediaserver_user=”root”}
: ${plexmediaserver_group=”wheel”}
Now you can restart your jail or start Plex with one of the following commands:
service plexmediaserver-plexpass start orservice plexmediaserver start
Access Web Interface
Now you are ready to access the web interface, point Plex to your media files and start playing all your movies and TV shows! You can access the web interface at:
Install PMS Updater
You have probably noticed that you Plex Media Server is not the latest version and is asking for an update. And you probably also notice that you are unable to update it from the web browser. So we need to install a little program called PMS Updater. So lets go ahead and get that installed.
From the shell within your Plex jail, we will first need to install some of the dependencies with the following commands:
pkg install wgetpkg install ca_root_nsspkg install perl5
Now we can download the PMS Updater with the following commands:
mkdir /usr/local/PMS_Updatercd /usr/local/PMS_Updaterwget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mstinaff/PMS_Updater/master/PMS_Updater.sh
Now we can run the updater to get the latest Plex update and the syntax is as follows:
Plex Media Server Updates
sh PMS_Updater.sh -u [user] -p [password] -v -a
So that should have you updated to the latest version and you’re good to go!
Automate PMS Updater and Setup as a Cron job
So dropping to command line to update your Plex Server every time is a bit of a pain. So we can work towards automating this a little bit. First we will need to store your login and password in a file. Go back to the /usr/local/PMS_Updater directory and create a password file with the following command:
nano auth.txt
Enter the following within the file:
user=email@address.com
password=password
Save the file and exit using Ctrl-X.
Now using the following command will perform the Plex update.
sh PMS_Updater.sh -c auth.txt -v -a
Now we can use this command as a Cron job. In the FreeNAS web interface go to Tasks -> Cron Jobs and add a new job. Enter the following into the command field.
/usr/local/bin/iocage exec [jailname] /bin/sh /usr/local/PMS_Updater/PMS_Updater.sh -c /usr/local/PMS_Updater/auth.txt -v -a
You can set it up to run automatically at a specified time, daily, monthly or whatever you’d like. I have un-ticked the ‘enabled’ option which means it does not run automatically on a schedule, however I have the option to run this job whenever I need to from the web interface.
Configure Tips
This article is not meant to lead you through the setup of your Plex Server. However here are a couple of tips, I found I needed:
If you have an issue with movies and TV showing up with dots in their names (i.e. with their file names, and not the name which should be scraped from the web, follow these instructions (source):
Plex Media Server Updates Windows
In the web interface for your plex server, go to Settings -> Server -> Agents -> Shows -> TheTVDB. In there, grab the line ‘Local Media Assets’ with your mouse and drag it downwards, so it ends up being at the bottom of the stack of active agents. Repeat the same under Settings -> Server -> Agents -> Shows -> TheMovieDatabase and Settings -> Server -> Agents -> Movies -> Plex Movie and Settings -> Server -> Agents -> Movies -> TheMovieDatabase
Check and make sure this is working by refreshing the metadata on one movie and wait a couple minutes. Plex should scrape the right data and update the movie title for you.
Wait 1 or 2 minutes.
Alright! So with this you should be up and running and experiencing Plex Media Server! Happy Plexing!
~Raze42
Sources:
Install Instructions: https://www.myrandomtips.com/linux/freenas/how-to-install-plex-media-server-on-freenas-11-2/
Updater Source Code: https://github.com/mstinaff/PMS_Updater
Updater Instructions: https://www.ceos3c.com/freenas/manually-update-plex-freenas/
Alternate Method (not tried): https://www.simontaplin.net/how-to-update-the-plex-plugin-and-others-on-freenas-11-2/