Adding FreeNAS Files to Plex Media Server Running on Raspian (Raspberry Pi)

[Streakfury]

Server Version#: 1.18.4.2171

Hi all,

Apologies if this topic is in the wrong sub-forum.

I’m having trouble getting my Plex Media Server to see my media library stored on a FreeNAS server. My media files are held on a server that runs FreeNAS, currently version 11.2-U7. I’ve got the Plex Media Server software running on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with the latest Raspian Lite version installed (so there’s no desktop or other UI, just a command line.)

So far I’ve managed to get everything set up and working, but I’ve got to the point where I need to add files to my media library in Plex, and I’m unsure if I’ve got the right location for the files, or if I’ve missed any setup along the way.

In FreeNAS, I’ve got a couple of Pools:

I’ve also got a single Jail set up:

The Jail has got two mount points specified:

I’m at the point where I’m trying to add media locations to my library. In Plex, these are the locations I’ve tried adding:

But after scanning the library it shows no media files.

After reading some of the documentation, it looks as though I needed to set up a user and a group within FreeNAS that matched the user and group that Plex would use to access the files.

So I SSH’d onto the Raspberry Pi, and got a list of users:

From the looks of things, the User ID for the ‘plex’ user is 109, and the group ID is 114. So I set about creating a similar user and group within FreeNAS:

Having set up the user and group, I still can’t get Plex to see any of the files on the FreeNAS server.

Are there any other settings that I need to check, or have I done something wrong? I’m unsure whether it’s simply the locations I’m trying to add the files from that are wrong, or if there is some other setup steps I need to take that I may have missed.

Thanks in advance for any tips! I’ll try and answer any questions anyone has, although I’m rather inexperienced with Linux-based OSes.

[Streakfury]

I forgot to add a detail which may or may not be important.

On the FreeNAS server, I initially had FreeNAS 9.10.x installed, and used the Plex Server plugin. Together they worked fine, and I was able to get Plex to see my library files straight away.

I decided to update the OS to FreeNAS 11.2 because the Plex plugin for 9.10 hadn’t been updated in a while, and there are changes coming that mean the artwork will cease to work on any version of Plex before 1.18.something.

Updating FreeNAS meant, of course, that the jail I set up in 9.10 wasn’t viewable/editable in 11.2, so I decided to set up a new jail, and run Plex on a separate machine (the Raspberry Pi) so that I can update it separately as needed, and not have to rely on the plugin being updated.

If need be I can use the Plex plugin again within FreeNAS, but as I had a spare Pi kicking about, I ideally wanted not to use FreeNAS for anything other than storing files.

Thanks again.

[mikec_pt]

FWIW you can just create a “custom jail” (make sure you enable VNET) and move over the plexdata dir form the old jail (or even put it on its own zfs dataset and mount it on the new jail)

Then just use pkgng or ports to keep pms updated, usually that doesn’t really lag much behind.

As for the issues accessing the files, there a lot of things that confuse me in the screens above, like talking about jail mountpoints when you want to access the media on another server…?
So that said how are you mounting the storage on the raspian system, NFS, SMB??

[Streakfury]

Thanks for the reply!

Sorry about the confusing screenshots. To clarify things - the Plex Media Server is installed on a Raspberry Pi. The videos I want to add to Plex are held on a different server, which is running FreeNAS. I want to add the media files on my FreeNAS server to the Plex library on the Raspberry Pi.

My original setup was that I had no Raspberry Pi. I just had a FreeNAS (9.10) server that held the media files, and the Plex plugin was installed in a jail within FreeNAS. I updated FreeNAS to 11.2 recently, and so the old jail and Plex plugin were no longer viewable in the new FreeNAS UI.

I decided I didn’t want the Plex plugin installed on the FreeNAS server, so instead, I installed Plex on a Raspberry Pi. The FreeNAS server’s sole responsibility is to serve media files, while the Raspberry Pi is responsible for the Plex software. I simply want to add media files held on FreeNAS to my Plex library on the Raspberry Pi.

I think I might have over-complicated things since installing FreeNAS 11.2 because before (when running FreeNAS 9.10 and having the Plex plugin installed) I needed a jail setting up, with mount points on the storage so that the Plex plugin in the jail could access the files held outside the jail etc… but I’m starting to think that all I actually need now is to make the files on FreeNAS accessible as a network share, and then add the shares to Plex.

Would that be right? If so, how do I go about that?

Thanks again for any help.