Good to hear it is all going well

 

TheWombat

 

It took me about an hour to set up the new mobo.  I had to reset the mobo.  For some reason or another if I turn off USB 3.0, it wouldn't recognized my USB keyboard at all.  Thereafter, it wouldn't recognize my Supermicro MV8 card.  After that, it wouldn't boot from USB.  After that, it didn't recognized two hard drives.  Thereafter, I left everything as default, set to boot up from USB, restarted everything and it works.

 

It takes a little bit longer to start up, but I am just happy that it is working.  I also just found out that my PS3 recognized Plex, and I can play my movies and TV shows via Plex.  Audio is only Stereo though.  I might end up movie the PS3 to the master bedroom since I don't have a media player there yet.

If you have the MV8 SuperMicro cards then you can fairly easily disable the RAID functionality on them which will speed up the boot time.

 

Doesn't solve the USB etc issues you've raised, however still helps the boot up.

 

TheWombat

Hi guys,

 

Hope you don't mind me jumping in and asking some noob questions.  I have had Unraid set up for a couple of years serving my media to my htpc running xbmc.  I would like to be able to serve media files to Android and IOS devices on my network and also like the idea of being able to access my media from outside of my network.  Trouble is, I'm very green when it comes to all this and - like the original OP - struggle to get my head around it!

 

First off - I'm running unraid v5 beta 14.  Any issues there with running the latest version of Plex?

Secondly, I do not have a cache drive. Is this necessary or can I run Plex successfully without it?

I see there is a Plexbmc plugin.  Does anyone have experience of running this within xbmc?  Will this give me the server functionality I desire allowing me to access media on IOS and Android devices both within and outside my network?

 

Thanks in advance for any help offered.

Hi guys,

 

Hope you don't mind me jumping in and asking some noob questions.  I have had Unraid set up for a couple of years serving my media to my htpc running xbmc.  I would like to be able to serve media files to Android and IOS devices on my network and also like the idea of being able to access my media from outside of my network.  Trouble is, I'm very green when it comes to all this and - like the original OP - struggle to get my head around it!

 

First off - I'm running unraid v5 beta 14.  Any issues there with running the latest version of Plex?

Secondly, I do not have a cache drive. Is this necessary or can I run Plex successfully without it?

I see there is a Plexbmc plugin.  Does anyone have experience of running this within xbmc?  Will this give me the server functionality I desire allowing me to access media on IOS and Android devices both within and outside my network?

 

Thanks in advance for any help offered.

 

Hi,

 

My suggestions below - others may have differing viewpoints.

 

1. Any reason for not updating to unRAID 5 final - I think majority of people would recommend that unless you have a very clear reason not to update? There were some fixes that help resolve some Plex issues.

 

2. As you say you are very green then I would recommend getting a cache drive and following the standard installation approach. It is straight forward and unless there is a clear reason why this isn't possible (e.g. no spare SATA connectors or license doesn't allow cache drive) then I'd go the cache drive route. There are other options but are more complex if you are green. You need to have the Plex transcoding and application directories somewhere and it is typically not recommended to have these on the USB key or on the protected array itself.

 

3. PleXMBC - haven't used as I am purely on Plex Server (PMS) and Plex Client (PHT).

 

hth

 

TheWombat

Thanks for the reply Wombat.  The reason for not updating from v5b14 was purely that it seemed to be working well and only having a very basic grasp of the process put me off updating.  If I should, I'll have attempt it.  Which version should I update to, the latest on the dl page I take it?

 

Regarding Plex, I'll take your advice on board.  If a cache drive is recommended I'll go down that route, unless of course there are alternatives to Plex that others recommend?  Plexbmc, Subsonic, Servio or others???

Thanks for the reply Wombat.  The reason for not updating from v5b14 was purely that it seemed to be working well and only having a very basic grasp of the process put me off updating.  If I should, I'll have attempt it.  Which version should I update to, the latest on the dl page I take it?

 

Regarding Plex, I'll take your advice on board.  If a cache drive is recommended I'll go down that route, unless of course there are alternatives to Plex that others recommend?  Plexbmc, Subsonic, Servio or others???

 

I'd suggest updating to v5 final. There are more than enough improvements to warrant it and if you have any issues while remaining on v5b14 the first thing you'd be asked to do would be to upgrade anyway. The process is straightforward, just follow the instructions, remember to take a backup of your USB key and a screen shot of what HDDs are in what position BEFORE you upgrade.

 

Regarding Plex and a cache drive, even a 100GB HDD would be  sufficient so you could reuse an old HDD if you have one spare.

 

Regarding Plex and other options... there are plenty but others would have to chip in and response. I switched from MediaPortal to Plex and have no regrets even though I had to convert my ISO images to MKV to better support streaming. In my experience I find Plex is the best choice if you want to stream to mobile devices and also play on HTPCs etc with a proper client-server architecture. However I am sure others will say that alternatives are better :-)

 

TheWombat

 

Sorry for yet more basic questions but if i am going to upgrade my server I want to be absolutely sure I have everything straight in my head and there is a lot of advice out there as to how to prooceed but some of it seems to conflict itself.

 

unRAIDServer-5.0-i386 is the latest stable version listed on the download page.  Is this the correct version to upgrade to?

 

I need to upgrade from v5 beta 14.  Do I follow the instructions for all previous 5.0-beta and 5.0-rc versions including 5.0-rc8a listed here: http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/UnRAID_Server_Version_5.0-beta_Release_Notes

 

Prepare the flash: either shutdown your server and plug the flash into your PC or Stop the array and perform the following actions referencing the flash share on your network:

Copy the files bzimage and bzroot from the zip file to the root of your flash device, overwriting the same-named files already there.

Reboot your server. Once boot-up has completed, you should see "Stopped. Configuration valid." array status with all disks assigned correctly.

Click on each disk link on the Main page and examine the Partition format field. If you see "MBR: error", or "MBR: unknown" for any disk, do not Start the array; instead post your finding in the Forum announcement thread for this release. If everything looks ok, click Start to bring the array on-line.

Go to Utils/New Permissions and execute that utility to change file ownership and permission settings. This is necessary for proper operation of the 5.0 security model.

 

Thanks again.

ok I want plex and plexconnect only for my appletv and possibly transcoding.

 

I have a shares named 1080p and 720p containing files that are in that format.

 

I also want to use xbmc and use the same folders.

Hi

I just installed "PlexMediaServer-0.9.8.10.215-020456b-unRAID.txz" as per instructions in the first posting.

 

Before that I upgraded from 4,7 to 5.0 (stable) by copying the bzimage and bzroot files, and then running the new-rights script (basically).

 

After reboot i find that:

 

1) the Array has to be manually started after reboot.

2) the share applications had lost it´s setting as "Cache only" and had to be reset.

3) Plex is not running (saying STOPPED)

4) new folders has been created in the \applications\Plex\library\

5) the console says "/boot/config/plugins/plexmediaserver/exportsettings: line 10: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-: No such file or directory"

6) The new application share on my cache drive now has a Yellow ball

7) If I click compute on that share, it show a link to cache AND disk1

folders applications/library and applications/temp has been created also on disk1.

 

Something seems to be missing, and I probably did something wrong. I can´t figure out what to do to make Plex running. I would also like unRaid to reboot and start Everything automatically.

 

Please help.

I just installed "PlexMediaServer-0.9.8.10.215-020456b-unRAID.txz" as per instructions in the first posting.

 

Before that I upgraded from 4,7 to 5.0 (stable) by copying the bzimage and bzroot files, and then running the new-rights script (basically).

 

After reboot i find that:

 

1) the Array has to be manually started after reboot.

2) the share applications had lost it´s setting as "Cache only" and had to be reset.

3) Plex is not running (saying STOPPED)

4) new folders has been created in the \applications\Plex\library\

5) the console says "/boot/config/plugins/plexmediaserver/exportsettings: line 10: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-: No such file or directory"

6) The new application share on my cache drive now has a Yellow ball

7) If I click compute on that share, it show a link to cache AND disk1

folders applications/library and applications/temp has been created also on disk1.

Something seems to be missing, and I probably did something wrong. I can´t figure out what to do to make Plex running. I would also like unRaid to reboot and start Everything automatically.

Few things:

1. Please provide the syslog

2. Did you reboot after the 4.7->5.0 upgrade and before the PMS installation? If you did, did the array start properly?

3. Did you have PMS already installed or was this a fresh install for it?

4. What other addons do you have on your setup?

 

Your problems might indicate that you have multiple problems since Plex installation should not affect the unRAID array startup. Also the symptoms seem pretty strange to me.

 

First thing to do is to make sure that the core unRAID is running fine. But let's see your answers first.

 

Personally I use the following as the official installation guideline but it seems to be identical to the 2nd post by Wombat's in this thread: http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/66930-helpful-unraid-links/#entry387455

 

Agree with henris - get unRAID working correctly before adding any addons.

 

re:

 

6) The new application share on my cache drive now has a Yellow ball - This is correct since this share is cache only - i.e. is not protected within the array.

 

did you previously have Plex installed on disk1 or something?

 

TheWombat

 

Thanks for answering.

 

I´ve been digging some more and found some answers:

 

1) the Array has to be manually started after reboot.

--> There is now a setting in "Disk settings" that says "Start automatically after reboot". After upgrade that setting was set to "No". Changed it to "Yes".

 

2) the share applications had lost it´s setting as "Cache only" and had to be reset.

--> No answer to why...

 

3) Plex is not running (saying STOPPED)

--> This is probably a combination of things. I uninstalled GCC as instructed in another thread.

      The new handling of rights: When creating the share, I did that in the browser as root, which gave the wrong ownership to the share. Ran the new script

      which fixed it. Should the share rather be created from a user account?

 

4) new folders has been created in the \applications\Plex\library\

--> But not all the needed folders apparently. After running the rights script and reboot, more folders were created.

 

5) the console says "/boot/config/plugins/plexmediaserver/exportsettings: line 10: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-: No such file or directory"

--> Found a hint saying to remove two lines in the exportsettings file. Did that and the Plex started!

 

6) The new application share on my cache drive now has a Yellow ball

xx> Wombat:  - This is correct since this share is cache only - i.e. is not protected within the array.

--> Is this not a bad thing? I takes a long time to scrape the libraries, and a good deal of small fixes are needed to make it look just right afterwards.

      I Think I would like it protected. Pro:s and Cons:s ?? Reinstall Plex needed?

 

7) If I click compute on that share, it show a link to cache AND disk1

--> Don´t know why that happened. Probably some setting I overlooked. I deleted the folders on Disk1 and it was OK.

 

Also; after Plex started, i tried to go to http://tower:32400/web/index.html#!/dashboard, and it only shows a symbol without link.

To start Plex webinterface I had to click the blue "running" text in the Plex settings page. Is this because I got a newer Plex version?

 

I tried a new reboot to get a Clean syslog, but some thing didn´t click. Did another reboot from console and the sequence stopped after saying:

ls: Cannot access /dev/hda[a-z]: No such file or directory.

Something is off and I hope You will help me some more.

I´ll do a hard-reset and see if I can get the syslog.

Rebooted and it is now running a Parity Check.

 

Please see attached syslog.

syslog-2013-11-14.txt

Rebooted and it is now running a Parity Check.

Parity check is running because unRAID detected unclean shutdown.

Nov 14 12:43:32 Tower emhttp: unclean shutdown detected

 

How did you shutdown/reboot it (web gui, command line, power button, reset button)?

That fault is since a Power failure in my house a long time ago, Before I had the UPS.

 

How do I best run fsck? /dev/sda is my usb stick with unRaid on it. I can still access it and Everything seems to work, except

I also suspect that the UPS will not correctly do a proper shutdown if the Power reserve should drop too much?

 

Current status: The server is now running fine, with Plex version: v0.9.8.10.215-020456b. It has scraped Everything and after a Days extra adjustments to the search results, all looks good. I´m a bit concerned about not having the library protected in the Array, but perhaps a weekly backup on the applications folder will do?

 

I don´t use the server for other things than work backups and the media storage. It´s been running without errors for two years Before the upgrade. In that lies the problem of forgetting things between turns (unRaid is too good :-) ) , but still, I would like it to be as much auto as possible.

I´m not good at Reading syslogs, so could You (someone) please read it through to see if something is missing in my setup?

 

There is one more thing I might want to do in the future and that´s to be able to get some movies from the hdd I planted at the back of my Samsung SmartTV and put them in avi format on the server. File system is XFS and the file format is .srf.

After that I might want to use the server for recording/editing (out the commersials) directly from TV broadcast. That is well beyond this thread, but if someone has any hints, they will be greatly appreciated.

 

 

Thank You!

 

Hi,

 

I had problems accessing Plex after installing. The problem was the empty Preferences.xml which only allowed - as it seemed connections from 127.0.0.1 and/or from the same subnet the unraid server is in.

To solve the problems there are 2 options:

 

1) edit the preferences.xml and add following within the <Preferences /> Tags

allowedNetworks="192.168.1.0/24,192.168.2.0/24,192.168.30.0/24,127.0.0.1/32"

 

2) create a ssh tunnel to the unraid server and connect to localhost:32400/web and change the settings using the web interface

ssh -L 32400:localhost:32400 x.x.x.x -l username -p 22

 

perhaps somebody finds this useful

 

cheers

 

Updated to reflect unRAID's Cache Only Share feature - thanks to S80_UK for the suggestion.

 

The following is assuming you are on unRAID 5.0 final (or similar)

 

1) On flash drive create directory "extra" i.e. "/boot/extra" if you are logged into the console

2) Go to Plex website and download Plex for Unraid e.g. "PlexMediaServer-0.9.8.6.175-88ffbb2-unRAID.txz" if you have PlexPass and access to the Betas or whatever is the latest version available to you

3) Copy "PlexMediaServer-0.9.8.6.175-88ffbb2-unRAID.txz" into the "extra" directory made in step 1

4) Create a Share called "applications" and set it as "Use cache disk:" = "Only"

4.1) On the applications Share create a directory called "Plex" i.e. "/applications/Plex"

4.2) On the applications Share create a directory called "Plex/library" i.e. "/applications/Plex/library"

4.3) On the applications Share create a directory called "Plex/temp" i.e. "/applications/Plex/temp"

5) Log in to the UnRaid Web Gui (e.g. "http://tower") from your web browser

 

Note: This next section will change where Plex Media Server is installed. If you don't see Plex listed then reboot UnRaid and check again.

 

6.1) Select "Settings"->"Plex Media Server" page

6.2) Ensure "Enable Plex Media Server:" is set to "No"

6.3) Set "Library directory" to be: "/mnt/cache/applications/Plex/library" or whatever you named it in step 4.2

6.4) Set "Temp directory" to be: "/mnt/cache/applications/Plex/temp" or whatever you named it in step 4.3

6.5) Ensure "Enable Plex Media Server:" is set to "Yes"

 

7) Do a final reboot and go back to the "Settings"->"Plex Media Server" page and confirm that Status is "RUNNING with version xxxxxxxxx"

 

Note: You are able to skip some of the reboots by using command line commands from the console, however the above is easier if you are less familiar.

 

You should then be able to access Plex Media Server via your web browser with: http://tower:32400/web/index.html#!/dashboard where "tower" is either the IP address or name of your UnRaid Server.

 

Anyone reading - feel free to suggest improvements, this is from memory as it has been a few months since installing Plex.

 

Whenever Plex comes out with a new version you just replace the file as per step 3 and reboot.

 

TheWombat

I tried to update from 0.9.8.17.282 to 0.9.8.18.290, and went I reboot the plug-in won't install.  I went back to .282, rebooted, and it installed just fine.

I have it installed but when I try to add library it only lets me choose disk shares and user0 and user from the list of files. Not my movies share? When I went to user0 and clicked my movies share it just kept opening up folders till I got to the movie. Do I have to add each movie by its self? Im using disk shares not split levels.

 

Bags:

So this doesn't work for you?    '/mnt/user/movies'?

 

 

Where are you having this problem?

  In the unRAID webGui on the page for the PLEX Media Server?

  Or on the PLEX webGUI (on http://tower:32400)  for ADDING a SECTION?

 

 

 

 

 

Dale that is the path I am using. I have two users.. Users and user0? Does it matter which one? When I add the folder is says scan complete but shows nothing in movies.

the console says "/boot/config/plugins/plexmediaserver/exportsettings: line 10: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-: No such file or directory"

 

I have this error as well. what 2 lines did you delete and from where?

user and user0 are not the same.

 

 

The cause of your 'locale' error is puzzling.

So a quick question on the plex side, when adding media I can only see the actual mnt drives and not the shares. Is this normal or is there a way for Plex to be assigned a single share for each media type?

Thanks in advance

Posted by: crowdx42

« on: Today at 08:08:01 PM »

    So a quick question on the plex side, when adding media I can only see the actual mnt drives and not the shares. Is this normal or is there a way for Plex to be assigned a single share for each media type?

Thanks in advance

 

On the Plex side click to add your share and select the type of media ie... Movies, TV shows, Music .... Then select add folder and Navigate to the user folder and you can select your share from there.

What is the best way to delete pled and start all over?