Cannot find a precise guide to move JUST THE METADATA to external SSD MacOS

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
8

Folks,

I see references here about creating symlinks.

My advice - DON’T DO IT!

There are parts of PMS which will NOT follow the symlinks.
PMS is NOT designed to be chopped up

If /var/lib/plexmediaserver gets too big for the root partition
(EXTREMELY COMMON)

Then please consider doing it the right way – Move PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_APPLICATION_SUPPORT_DIR in its entirety.

Even I needed to do it.

  1. I set PMS to run as my username
  2. I moved PMS from the SSD to the RAID volume
[chuck@lizum ~.1999]$ cat /etc/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service.d/override.conf 
[Service]
Environment="PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_APPLICATION_SUPPORT_DIR=/vol/plexmediaserver"
User=chuck
Group=chuck
[chuck@lizum ~.2000]

Doing it was VERY simple:

sudo bash
mkdir /vol/plexmediaserver
cd "/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support"
systemctl stop plexmediaserver
tar cf - . | ( cd /vol/plexmediaserver ; tar xf -)
chown -R chuck:chuck /vol/plexmediaservr

Now create the override file above.

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start plexmediaserver

if you’ve done it correctly,

  1. PMS is running as the username you assigned
  2. You’ll see the logfile activity in the new APP_SUPPORT_DIR path (drill in)

No need to carve up the subdirectories anymore
No more complicated backups

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