I am working on trying to get my unRAID system up and running.  I have a few questions that I need help with relating to getting Plex Media Server working on my unRAID system.

 

The problems that I am having are probably just because I don't understand how unRAID works, so please be understanding in your responses.

 

There are several issues that I am seeing with my new system.  I can not seem to mount my share folder to my windows PC unless I enable user shares.  With enabling user shares, when I telnet into my raid PC, I can see the folder and files in /mnt/disk1/Movies.  As soon as I enable user shares, I then get two folders /mnt/disk1/Movies and /mnt/user/Movies, but can only mount //tower/Movies from windows.  I don't understand why this is.  Also, it seems that I have to disable parity checking in order to be able to copy files into the share from windows, otherwise they won't get copied - the copy times out.

 

Second, I am trying to get Plex Media Server working on my unRAID system.  I have installed PMS and can access it with //tower:32400/manage.  I have added a Movies library to it and have pointed it to the Movies share.  PMS can not see any files in the folder however.  I have tried it when shares have not been enabled and when they have been enabled.  I have tried pointing to both the /mnt/disk1/Movies and /mnt/user/Movies and PMS still does not see any files.  Plex does start after I reboot unRAID.  I am at a loss for what to try next.  My Roku box can see PMS running on my unRAID system, but it likewise sees no movie files.

 

I have not added a cache drive, and my Plex library is set to the default /tmp/Library and the temp directory is the default /tmp.  Do you need to have a cache drive in order for Plex to work?  I did notice one thing in the PMS web gui - I do have the following message appear when I click on the Activity icon - Notifications - Unable to listen for events on Tower Media Server.  I am not certain what this means.

 

I would appreciate any and all help you can provide to getting this resolved.  I am to the point of wanting to scream.   

 

 

Here is my system log.

syslog-2013-04-23.txt

What do you mean by "disable parity checking"?

 

Also, you should not use /tmp for anything since that folder is RAM.

 

 

Tapatalk from CM10.1 Kindle

 

 

I beleive that I might have been in the middle of a parity sync after the initial build.  I disabled the sync from happening so that I could copy some files over, then started the sync after I was done.  It seems that a file transfer would time out during the parity sync.  I hope that I am using the correct terminology.  As I said I am quite new to this.

 

If I don't use /tmp, what should I use instead?  I want to be able to see and use my files and have PMS retain all of the media metadata after a reboot.

I have mine using folders on cache but others have used folders on the array for this. It has been reported that Plex keeps the drive spun up. If it is writing it will also have parity spun up. Better if cache is used but until you have a cache drive I guess you will have to use folders on the array.

 

Now that I have a real keyboard a longer explanation of why /tmp is no good for the Plex library.

 

unRAID keeps all of its operating system files in a RAM filesystem. This includes all of the normal Linux folders such as /tmp. Any changes made to anything in RAMfs will not survive a reboot since the RAMfs is recreated by unpacking bzroot from flash during boot.

 

In general, anything not in /boot (the flash drive) or /mnt (disks and shares) is not permanent.

So how do I go ahead and use the share instead of tmp?  Do I need to create a new share that I point to for the app data?  Would this explain why Plex can't see any of the files already there?  Or do you think that there might be some kind of permissions thing going on?  Thanks for your timely response on these questions.

The reason a share is created at /mnt/user/Movies is because any folder at the top level of any disk, such as /mnt/disk1/Movies, is automatically a user share. The reason you can't see disk1 itself as a share is probably because you have not shared it. Click on disk1 from the main page. This will take you to a page for disk1 setup and you can set sharing for disk1 here under SMB security settings. You really don't need to share specific disks if you don't want to since the named user shares is probably more logical if you intend to have them spanning multiple disks.

 

You can put your Plex library in any folder of your disks. If you plan on adding other plugins it might be good to create a folder just for plugins though. I have a cache-only share called "apps" that I put all of my application data on. In your case you could create a new share on a disk called apps or whatever, and then have Plex put its library in a subfolder. It will create the subfolder for you I think.

 

Not sure why Plex can't see your Movies though. I would have thought it would have just used up all of your RAM trying to create the library and maybe crashed.

 

Anyway, try what I have already suggested and we'll see what we can figure out next.

Do I need to have another user defined besides root or is root sufficient? 

 

I found that there was a problem with permissions in my /mnt/user/Movies in that when I logged in from my windows PC, I was not able to rename or delete the file.  I could only read it.  It turns out that when I originally copied the files over, that I had created a user with a password, and that I had mapped it to my windows machine with the user/password.  Subsequently, I have deleted the user, but the permissions on the files were messed up since.  I have corrected the permissions issue, so that is now okay.

 

I checked disk1 settings and it is enabled for sharing, so I don't think that is the issue.

 

I have created a new share Apps and have changed Plex Library to point to /mnt/user/Apps/Library and Plex temp to point to /mnt/user/Apps/tmp.  Now when I bring up PMS manage on the web, I just get a swirling circle which never goes away.  Clicking on any of the icons (home, activity, settings) does nothing.  I have tried rebooting, but still the same thing.  Any suggestions?

You only need users if you want to have specific permissions for specific users. As long as all of your shares are set to Public security then any user can read/write them.

 

I don't know what to suggest about your Plex problem. Maybe check the permissions of your Apps share? Maybe remove and reinstall Plex to see if it installs differently after your other changes.

 

Is this a new server or did you upgrade from some previous version? If upgrade, did you run New Permissions?

 

This is a new build.  I will try uninstalling and reinstalling Plex to see if that makes any difference.  If not, I will try the Plex forum to see if anyone there has any suggestions.

Well, I finally got this resolved with the help of folks on the Plex forum.  It turned out to be the browser that I was using.  I originally used IE, then switched over to Firefox.  This got me part way there, but when I installed Firefox, it pulled in stuff from IE and propigated the problem.  I eventually went to Chrome and things are up and running.