Backing up Plex Media Server on Linux

Plex Media Server
1

Server Version#: 1.21.1.3876

I just wanted to double check something about backups and Plex Media Server on linux. According to the article here:

it sounds like all I need to backup to have a complete backup of plex is backup:
Plex/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Preferences.xml

and all the .db files like:

Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Databases/com.plexapp.plugins.library.db
Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Databases/com.plexapp.dlna.db
Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Databases/com.plexapp.plugins.library.blobs.db

A couple of questions

  1. Is that really it? If you have auto image upload enabled for phones doesn’t it also go somewhere within that Plex directory?
  2. If I only backup these what would need to be recreated to have my Plex library back to “normal” again? I assume it will need to rematch all the shows/movies/etc and then download images, metadata, etc which is ok. What I don’t want to do is have to manually specify anything like collections, played/unplayed/etc. If it needs to spend a day or two downloading images that’s ok, but I don’t want to have to sort, group, etc anything again.
  3. For all the video thumbnails that are generated for in-video scrubbing and intro skipping will all that data need to be regenerated? That is a TON of data and would probably take a week or two to regenerate. Is that something I could backup as well to make this process go quicker?

At the end of the day I guess I’m just looking for the minimum to backup that will make bringing the server backup as quick as possible without having to backup 50000 files.

My file counts currently look like this:

456014 : Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/
166338 : Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Cache
    21 : Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Codecs
     4 : Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Crash Reports
     0 : Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Diagnostics
   255 : Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Logs
125656 : Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media
  4304 : Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media Upload
151911 : Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Metadata
  7158 : Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support
   365 : Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins

Thanks!

2

You are correct in that:

  1. Preferences.xml
  2. Databases/*

There is one caveat: You must not have uploaded custom posters or other items which aren’t stored with the media files themselves.

I take a different approach to backups.

  1. Stop Plex
  2. Make a tar.gz file of ./Library (which is a full image backup into a single compressed tar ball )
  3. Start PMS
  4. Upload that single tar file to backup storage.

I have complete freedom with Plex. I never have to worry about anything I might do in plug-ins or other areas because i have a full image.

It’s a bit more to upload but it is a single file.

3

Ok let me try compressing the whole thing and sending that and see what that looks like time-wise. Thanks.

Btw for the image sync from phones, is there a way to specify another directory outside the plex data directory? I have all my normal photos/videos on a totally different drive along with movies, tv shows, etc and it would be nice if I could direct those photos there rather than in the same folder as the plex library directory. Especially now if I’m going to zip up the directory for library backups.

4

I’m not an app guy. I’m as much a user as you are. You probably use the app more than I do ( I don’t use too much Plex outside of work hours other than the TV itself )

5

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