New to UNRAID and completely lost.

[vonbankfamily09]

Need help setting up my UNRAID server. My plan at this moment is to run this as a plex server. 

 

Currently i have 

                            1- 6TB drive Parity

                            1- 6TB data drive

                            1- 500 GB SSD set up for Cache

                            1- CD/DVD drive 

 

                                The only docker installed is Plex.

Shares are the following,

appdata 

domains 

download 

iso 

Media

system 

 

Plex is set up to look at the Media folder.

 

My questions are

 

1. Should I set up share folder for Movies and TV shows or leave it combined in media?

 

2. How do i add media to my cache drive so that it knows what folder to put it when mover moves it?

 

 

 

[s_mason16]

9 minutes ago, vonbankfamily09 said:

 

1. Should I set up share folder for Movies and TV shows or leave it combined in media?

Split them into two. tv shows and movies. 

 

10 minutes ago, vonbankfamily09 said:

2. How do i add media to my cache drive so that it knows what folder to put it when mover moves it?

if the Share "media" is configured to use the cache then all data dropped to the share will go to the cache first.  you don't ever want to actually drop stuff onto the cache, just put it in the media share. unraid will do the rest. 

[vonbankfamily09]

1 hour ago, s_mason16 said:

Split them into two. tv shows and movies. 

 

if the Share "media" is configured to use the cache then all data dropped to the share will go to the cache first.  you don't ever want to actually drop stuff onto the cache, just put it in the media share. unraid will do the rest. 

I created two user shares. One for TV Shows and the other one for Movies. Both are set up by default the same as shown below. Do I need to change them?

 

Allocation method:     High-water

Minimum free space:    0KB

Split level:     Automatically split any directory as required

Included disk(s):    All

Excluded disk(s):    None

Use cache disk:    No

Enable Copy-on-write:    Auto

Share status:    Share contains data

 

Below is my media share. So if I drop all media data (movie & TV shows) to this share UNRAID will know which folder to put it into?

 

Share Name : Media

Allocation method:    High-water

Minimum free space:   0KB

Split level:   Automatically split any directory as required

Included disk(s):   Disk 1

Excluded disk(s):   None

Use cache disk:   Yes

Enable Copy-on-write:   Auto

Share status:   Share is empty

 

Below is what Plex Docker is set up as. Will this work?

Name: binhex-plex

Repository:  binhex/arch-plex

Network Type:    Host           

Privileged:   OFF

Host Path 2: /mnt/user/Media/

       Container Path: /media

Key 1: /config/transcode

       Container Variable: TRANS_DIR

Key 2: 000

       Container Variable: UMASK

Key 3: 99

       Container Variable: PUID

Key 4: 100

      Container Variable: PUID

 

 

[tdallen]

Hi -

 

Using TVShows vs. Media is an either/or situation.  You'd either use one approach or the other.  I'm with @s_mason16, I like to have a separate user share for TVShows vs. Movies.  That said, if you are going the TVShows route you no longer need a Media share.  Going forward you would access tv shows at /mnt/user/TVShows and movies at /mnt/user/Movies.  In Plex you'd pass in both paths and configure two libraries, one for TVShows and one for Movies.

 

The default settings for the shares are fine except for Minimum Free Space.  Set that to something higher, say 20GB so that there is room left as things fill up.  Also, it sounds like you want to use the cache drive (which is fine, though there is no requirement to do so).  If so, change Use Cache disk to Yes.  Note, you probably will want to revisit some of these settings later on - but since you're just getting started the other share settings are fine for now.

 

[vonbankfamily09]

18 hours ago, tdallen said:

Hi -

 

Using TVShows vs. Media is an either/or situation.  You'd either use one approach or the other.  I'm with @s_mason16, I like to have a separate user share for TVShows vs. Movies.  That said, if you are going the TVShows route you no longer need a Media share.  Going forward you would access tv shows at /mnt/user/TVShows and movies at /mnt/user/Movies.  In Plex you'd pass in both paths and configure two libraries, one for TVShows and one for Movies.

 

The default settings for the shares are fine except for Minimum Free Space.  Set that to something higher, say 20GB so that there is room left as things fill up.  Also, it sounds like you want to use the cache drive (which is fine, though there is no requirement to do so).  If so, change Use Cache disk to Yes.  Note, you probably will want to revisit some of these settings later on - but since you're just getting started the other share settings are fine for now.

 

Thanks to both of you for this info.

 

I have changed both user shares (Movie & TV Shows) to 20GB and changed use chase drive to yes. 

 

Hopefully one last question . 

 

When i go to move a movie file over to my server, which folder do i place it in so that it goes to the cache drive first?

             When i open the server on my personal computer all i see is the move & tv show folder. Isn't that the folder on the array?

 

How does the server know which folder (movie or TV Shows) to place it in?

 

Thanks again. 

[tdallen]

It's important to realize that /mnt/user/Movies isn't a single place.  It's a sort of "smart" directory listing.  Here's the wiki reference, it's definitely worth a read through.

 

Briefly, though, when you browse your server from your PC, you will see that " Movies" is available since you created it as a user share.  When you mount it as a folder, you will be accessing /mnt/user/Movies.  But like I said, that's not a single place.  It's actually many places:

• /mnt/cache/Movies
• /mnt/disk1/Movies
• /mnt/disk2/Movies
• /mnt/disk3/Movies
• etc

When you copy a file from your PC to the "Movies" folder on your server, unRAID will pick one of those places to put the file.  If Movies is set to use cache, it will place the file in /mnt/cache/Movies.  Later "mover" will move the file from /mnt/cache/Movies to, let's say, /mnt/disk2/Movies.  You never have to worry about that.  By accessing the virtual directory /mnt/user/Movies, unRAID takes care of aggregating all those physical places into a single logical overall view for you - all nicely packaged into the share called "Movies".

Edited January 11, 2018 by tdallen

[vonbankfamily09]

Thanks @tdallenfor taking the time to help me with this.

 

I just tried it with a copy of my sons favorite show and it worked. Now i just need to work on setting up plex so that it see's it. Right now plex is showing an empty folder but on server it's there under tv shows.

[tdallen]

Plex libraries need to be updated after new files are added.  You can do that in the Plex UI, it's something like scan library or scan files, on the ... to the right of the library name.  You can also set Plex to automatically update its libraries on a schedule.

[vonbankfamily09]

Thanks @tdallen it's working now

 

Thanks for all the help

[kizer]

I have mine setup like this using shares and telling it which drives to use because my OCD doesn't like letting the system totally do what it wants to. 

Also I do this simply to limit some drive spinning up. When I'm watching a TV show I don't need all 8 of my drives up and spinning so I cage them some by limiting which group of drives that may or may not spin up some. 

 

TV

/mnt/disk1/TV/

/mnt/disk2/TV/

 

Movies

/mnt/disk3/Movies/

/mnt/disk4/Movies/

/mnt/disk4/Movies/

 

Through the magic of unRAID I only see (TV and Movies) on my PC. 

 

Plex makes it even simpler for my Kids and my Wife who can care less about which drives what is on as long as they can click on an image on their iPad or TV. 

God Forbid I update anything while they are home or the wifi go down for the evening. You'd think the end of the world is upon us. Lol

 

[vonbankfamily09]

Thanks @kizer for the info. Sorry it took me some time to reply. Been away for a little bit due to work. I did just add another drive for my movies so now just need to get one for TV shows.

When you list,

Movies

/mnt/disk3/Movies/

/mnt/disk4/Movies/

/mnt/disk4/Movies/

is that what you put in for Plex?  I changed my settings for Movie share to use disk 1 & disk 2 and downloaded a few movies today but they all seam to still go to disk 1. There is still a lot to learn with this. Of course I need to go back to work tomorrow and will not be able to work oaths till Friday which will only leave 3 days left till my free trial expires to play with this to make sure it works.

[kizer]

No in Plex I point Movies to /mnt/user/Movies/

 

since /mnt/user/Movies = all my Movie drives

thats the great thing about unRAID is it takes a bunch of drives and makes them appear as one.

 

You can always request an extension on your Trial. Trust me we want this to work for you just as well. 

 

As for Drives it also depends on what your settings are. I use fill and some use High Water to determine when files hit which drives. Make sure you use the Help button in unRAID. It’s really really useful. 

[waya]

How do you see unraid  movies drive on your computer so you can add more movies to it?

[Hoopster]

36 minutes ago, waya said:

How do you see unraid  movies drive on your computer so you can add more movies to it?

 

unRAID shares that are exported as Public shares will show up as network shares when browsing your server.

 

 

 

You'll also have to make sure the appropriate network service(s) for your client(s) are enabled in Settings.