Has anyone done this very specific Linux migration?

Plex Media Server
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IF you’re using all the default locations:

  1. Migrating “the whole server” (meaning PMS) is as
    a. Make a tarball of /var/lib/plexmediaserver,
    b. Install PMS on the new host (whatever it is)
    c. Stop PMS after installing (it will auto start that first time)
    d. Remove the newly-created Library directory in /var/lib/plexmediaserver
    e. Untar the cloned tar ball to supersede that which was created
    f. sudo chown -R plex:plex /var/lib/plexmediaserver to update to the new UID:GID

  2. Having made a clone, one of the two “Preferences.xml” file must be deleted so the server, when it starts, can create all the new ID values and then be signed into the account

This is what bothers me

There are many things which qualify as ‘multi-server’ environment.

If you are truly talking about a ASMP (Asymetric Multi-Processing) cluster, which as what is frequently found in a HA environment, then PMS will not work that way.

PMS is written for the home user environment – not a commercial/enterprise grade environment.

  1. The database server, SQLite3 is single-kernel context. It will fail (almost immediately corrupt itself) in multi-kernel environments

  2. Sqlite3 cannot be replaced by SQL Server, MongoDB, or any other larger-scale engine.

To roll back, If you mean “One Server Instance”, which exists in a Single Kernel and Namespace context, to another Single Kernel host (aka. SMP) then it’s as easy as I’ve detailed.

I show the full process here:

  1. Backup from the one host
  2. Restore to another
  3. “Decommision” (note at the bottom) the original server.

I have multiple ESXi guest OS / PMS instances for all the testing I do. Each is self contained and atomic from the others all sharing the same source media