Help convince Plex developers to support unRAID

[btlupin]

PMS works well on 5.06a for me. I don't require transcoding since I use a macmini as a client. So far it works as well as PMS did on the macmini. 

[speedkills]

As long as the client is capable of playing your media files on it's own then no transcoding is required.  Something like an iPad or AppleTV2 will require transcoding, a full fledged htpc will not and I believe the RokuHD may not need transcoding either, but don't quote me on that.

[mgworek]

Have not rebooted it yet but I have it up and running.

 

I am playing 720p files on my ipad. Only thing I am having issues with is not always seeing the library on the ipad but i can still search and find things to play.

[mrklaw]

as I understand it, there are three ways PMS can serve content, and it polls the destination device to choose which to do.

 

1) the destination can play the file being requested. PMS simply streams the file

2) the destination can play the video format, but not in the current container. PMS will remux in realtime. This takes some CPU but not much.

3) the destination cannot play the video format, so PMS needs to transcode to a format it will play. This requires significant CPU - it uses FFMPEG and previous estimates for the OSX client have suggested needing a 2GHz C2D CPU to transcode 1080p -> 720p in realtime.

 

Hopefully the developers will include options for not transcoding, now that they are looking at linux which includes lots of lower powered machines.

 

If you have 'thick' clients like a mac mini or a HTPC on each of your screens, they'll do the decoding so you'll just be serving up files. There have also been requests to 'subcontract' out the transcoding to another machine on the network. Many Plex users have at least one Mac on their network, so the server could hand off transcoding to such a computer before it is sent on to the final destination device.

 

 

[kaiguy]

Plex Media Server for Slackware will really improve when we start supplying feedback to the Plex devs.  I doubt they are actively monitoring this forum.

 

I'm glad to hear people are having luck.  I, unfortunately, am not in that same boat.

[theone]

Does anyone know if there is work being done to enable PLEX on POPCORNHOUR clients?

 

[mgworek]

Thanks BRiT and Stokkes. Rebooted and everything is up and running. Streaming 720p to iPad. Has it's issues but it's only the first release!

[aiden]

Does anyone know if there is work being done to enable PLEX on POPCORNHOUR clients?

 

That's a Plex Forum question.  My guess would be no, since PCH and others like my Dune are proprietary hardware with their own closed source client code.

[mrklaw]

My server isn't strong enough to transcode, so I'd like my mac mini to continue to do that (I need to serve up to apple TVs and the mac mini). But I don't want my PMS on the mini waking up all the hard drives on my server every hour to check if there are any updates. And I've read people having problems with PMS detecting changes across a network.

 

So it'd be good if I could have a version of PMS on the server that exists only to update the metadata/library, and then makes that available to the mac mini as the 'main' machine. Does the linux version detect file changes properly? (read that unRAID doesn't update folder modification times so it might not notice?)

[scalene]

Has anyone tried transcoding with a Sempron 140?  I suspect it would be underpowered?  Any ideas for an upgrade path?

[prostuff1]

Has anyone tried transcoding with a Sempron 140?  I suspect it would be underpowered?  Any ideas for an upgrade path?

Pretty much anything dual core or above with 2GHz or above processing power.

 

Do some searching on google and over on the airvideo forums to see what they recommend.

[meep]

almost there, just can't get PMS to start on unRAID boot. HEre's my go script - all the logger items are displayed in my log;

 

#!/bin/bash
# Start the Management Utility
logger -t "$0[$$]"  "##### STARTING GO script. #####"
/usr/local/sbin/emhttp &
logger -t "$0[$$]"  "##### SETTING SYM LINKS. #####"
ln -s /mnt/cache/.Plex/Library /Library

ln -s /mnt/cache/.Plex/Library /root/Library

logger -t "$0[$$]"  "##### LOADING TO CONF. #####"
echo "/mnt/cache/.Plex" >> /etc/ld.so.conf
ldconfig
logger -t "$0[$$]"  "##### STARTING PLEX. #####"
cd /mnt/cache/.Plex/PlexMediaServer-v0.9.2.8-34480ac
./start.sh >> /Library/Logs/Plex\ Media\ Server.log 2>&1 &

 

Any help?

[Bagpuss]

Plex Media Server for Slackware will really improve when we start supplying feedback to the Plex devs.  I doubt they are actively monitoring this forum.

 

I'm glad to hear people are having luck.  I, unfortunately, am not in that same boat.

 

I totally agree, and with that in mind I've created a thread on the Plex forums detailing the main issues that I've come across whilst testing. You can find it here:

http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/27095-bugsissues-in-plex-v0928-34480ac-with-unraid-v50beta6a/

 

I've also send a PM to Elan (main Plex developer), to bring it to his attention.

 

It would be great if folks using Plex on their unRAID box could add any issues they've found to the thread. That way, they are all in the same place, and will make it easier for the Plex guys to fix stuff.

 

Andy.

 

[kaiguy]

Call me crazy, but from a business standpoint, I think it would be in Lime-Tech's best interest to perhaps aid in the debugging of getting PMS to run on unRAID.  If/when PMS runs stably, I know there will be an increase in demand of Lime-Tech products from the Plex community.  I used Plex on a Mac Mini with a Drobo before I switched to unRAID for my storage needs, and now I can't stop recommending both (Plex and unRAID, not Drobo). 

 

Glad to see this thread isn't completely going silent.  Thanks, Bagpuss.

[christuf]

Call me crazy, but from a business standpoint, I think it would be in Lime-Tech's best interest to perhaps aid in the debugging of getting PMS to run on unRAID.  If/when PMS runs stably, I know there will be an increase in demand of Lime-Tech products from the Plex community.  I used Plex on a Mac Mini with a Drobo before I switched to unRAID for my storage needs, and now I can't stop recommending both (Plex and unRAID, not Drobo). 

 

Glad to see this thread isn't completely going silent.  Thanks, Bagpuss.

 

I understand that the issues are really with Plex, not UnRAID... at the end of the day, UnRAID is effectively Slackware-based.

 

Rest assured that Elan will resolve the issues eventually... he's just taken Plex from a Mac-only product and expanded the distribution channels enormously.  It's more in Plex's economic interest to solve the problems - they grow by taking market share from Boxee/ XMBC/ PCH.  If Elan is able to develop a stable Media Server, it'll be the go-to choice for this application. In my mind, it's there already.

[sdesbure]

I upgraded my server to 5.0beta6a in order to use PMS. Everything went smoothly (don't forget to remove gcc et al.).

Seems to work (didn't have a chance to launch a movie).

[elan]

Darn it, not only have you convinced us to port to unRAID, but now I'm hankering to build an unRAID system myself!

[speeding_ant]

Horray! Go Elan! My unRAID server has been running for a few years with no hiccups. I've replaced several failed drives, upgraded a few, and data is still in-tact and working well.

[jamerson9]

Darn it, not only have you convinced us to port to unRAID, but now I'm hankering to build an unRAID system myself!

 

;D

 

Darn good decision.

[Bagpuss]

Been working with Elan this evening, and he has solved the problem of libraries not showing up on iOS/other clients.

 

Please see the Plex unRAID FAQ entry here.

[mrklaw]

Darn it, not only have you convinced us to port to unRAID, but now I'm hankering to build an unRAID system myself!

 

nice!

 

Build a nice, low power one. Then you'll save electricity and be tempted to farm out transcoding to a slave PMS server on the network 

[btlupin]

Darn it, not only have you convinced us to port to unRAID, but now I'm hankering to build an unRAID system myself!

 

nice!

 

Build a nice, low power one. Then you'll save electricity and be tempted to farm out transcoding to a slave PMS server on the network 

 

How would that work (slave pms server)?

[darbronnoco]

Darn it, not only have you convinced us to port to unRAID, but now I'm hankering to build an unRAID system myself!

 

Do it Elan!  You won't regret it.  I love my unraid box, and plex coming to unraid is just the icing on the cake!  Thanks for your hard work on Plex and I look forward to seeing things develop with plex on unraid. 

[omkar]

Thanks to all the great posts here, I've made some progress installing Plex on my unRAID server.  I am running unRAID 5.0b6a and the addons I am running are cache_dirs, Subsonic and the Powerdown script, SABnzbd, and Sick Beard.

 

I telnet'd into my unRAID server and installed Plex to a .Plex directory on my cache disk following BRiT's instructions.  Here's what I did:

cd /mnt/cache
wget http://www.plexapp.com/releases/PlexMediaServer-v0.9.2.8-34480ac-slackware.tar.bz2
tar xf PlexMediaServer-v0.9.2.8-34480ac-slackware.tar.bz2
mv PlexMediaServer-v0.9.2.8-34480ac .Plex
rm PlexMediaServer-v0.9.2.8-34480ac-slackware.tar.bz2
cd .Plex
./start.sh

 

The last command starts Plex and you can then access Plex via your browser: http://tower:32400/manage/index.html

 

Within Plex, I added a Music section and had it scan one of my directories.  Keep it small as right now you are doing this to test Plex and get the Library formed.  Once you are satisfied that Plex is working ok so far, shut down Plex.  You can shut down Plex by finding the Process ID for it and killing that process.

 

The next step is to set up some symlinks so that the Plex Library is not stored in memory (in this example, we'll store it on the cache disk) and to have Plex start when unRAID boots.  To do this, I followed BRiT's instructions.  I entered the following commands:

cd ~
mkdir /mnt/cache/.Plex/
mv ~/Library/ /mnt/cache/.Plex/
ln -s /mnt/cache/.Plex/Library /Library
ln -s /mnt/cache/.Plex/Library /root/Library

And then I edited my go file (/boot/config/go) and added the followed 3 lines to the end:

ln -s /mnt/cache/.Plex/Library /Library
ln -s /mnt/cache/.Plex/Library /root/Library
/mnt/cache/.Plex/start.sh >> /Library/Logs/Plex\ Media\ Server.log 2>&1 & 

 

I then edited the Plex start script so that it would work when called from outside the Plex directory.  Edit the file (/mnt/cache/.Plex/start.sh) and change the last line from

./Plex\ Media\ Server

to

$SCRIPTPATH/Plex\ Media\ Server

 

Next, we need to make sure Plex stores its temporary transcode files on the cache disk instead of memory.  Create a directory for these temporary files on the cache disk:

cd /mnt/cache
mkdir .tmp

 

Now, add this towards the bottom of your go file so that Plex will store its temporary transcode files in the directory you just created:

cd /tmp; tar cf - . | (cd /mnt/cache/.tmp; tar xf -)
mount --bind /mnt/cache/.tmp /tmp

 

Now, reboot your server and Plex should start up and should be storing its library and temporary transcode files on the cache disk.

 

-------

 

My questions

1. Is the cache drive the best place to install Plex?

2. Is the cache drive the best place to store the Plex library? What if the cache drive crashes?

3. I want to get transcoding to work and it looks like I need to create a symlink for the tmp directory.  Can anyone share the command they are using?  Also, does it need to be added to the go file?

 

UPDATED 6/8: After I got transcoding working (thanks to all here), I added those steps to this post and striked question 3.

 

[kaiguy]

The FAQ you referenced shows the entry you should make in your go file:

 

cd /tmp; tar cf - . | (cd /mnt/cache/.tmp; tar xf -)
mount --bind /mnt/cache/.tmp /tmp

 

Of course you can change the new location to your liking.