Getting plex setup on Ubuntu Server 18.04 CLI

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

Server Version#:Ubuntu 18.04
Player Version#: 3.87.3

Good evening. Recently I attempted to upgrade my Ubuntu server from 16.10 to 18.04. Unfortunately, there isn’t a direct upgrade path from the older version to the newer so I had to do a fresh install. Obviously, this wiped out all previous server settings. I’m not sure how I was able to get this working before but my issue is that once Plex is installed, it isn’t able to find the volume that contains my media. I have attempted to create a share and whatnot but unfortunately I am not super great with Ubuntu command line and so I’ve been struggling to get this sorted out.

Anyone very good with this sort of thing? I know this isn’t s specific PLEX issue but most of the googling I’ve done have taken be to topics around what needs to happen but nothing (as of yet) has actually helped be figure out the issue. I’ll try to list a few the things I’ve tried just so everyone knows:

  • Installed SAMBA and attempted to follow steps for creating a share
  • Installed SMBClient to verify the share
    • The share appears to be there but I am not able to click through it – Receive error “Unable to access location: Failed to mount windows share: No such file or directory”
  • Attempted to mount a volume at bootup to ensure it was always available by modifying FSTAB
    • This resulted in an error at bootup and the change had to be removed in emergency mode

I’m thinking the last time I set this up, I had installed the GUI to do it and then removed the GUI once finished. I’ll probably go that route again if needed but part of why I put this on Ubuntu CLI was to learn more about how it works. Certainly hitting some frustration points but I do enjoy the challenge a bit.

Anyway, if anyone is interested in trying to assist I would appreciate it. I can usually only work on this in the evenings (EST) so it is possible I might be a little slow to respond depending on when anyone posts.

Thanks for the assistance.
Krubb

2

You don’t need to install the GUI.
You can setup PMS using a SSH-tunnel

The procedure is simple:

  1. Enable sshd on the server
  2. ssh -L 8888:127.0.0.1:32400 ip.addr.of.server
  3. Sign in and let that session sit idle.
  4. Open an incognito browser
  5. In it, go to addr http://127.0.0.1:8888/web
  6. This will open the Plex/Web UI , which will then let you complete setup

When setting up a system, I advocate making sure to create a /home partition. During OS install / upgrade, even if you lose the OS partition, /home can be preserved intact.

I do have several Linux Tips
https://forums.plex.tv/tags/server-linux-tips

Here, you will find how to handle the Samba mounts as well as how to relocate Plex’s data to /home/plexdata (where I recommend)

3

ChuckPA,

Thanks for replying. I was able to ssh into the server and get Plex setup but my issue is it doesn’t see my media. I have that on a volume but I can’t seem to figure out how I make that volume appear to the OS and Plex. When I browse my network I see the PLEX share but once I try to click through, I get the message I posted earlier. So, it appears I don’t have everything shared correctly. THAT is what I’m hoping to get some assistance on.

4

Plex runs as its own user plex:plex

make certain to allow for that username or, as a test, open one share to give everyone read-only access on the server which has your media.

Also, when it mounts on the local host. Make sure the minimal permissions for directories are 755 and files 644

If using NFS for server… not a problem.
if using SMB/CIFS as you stated above.

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