Hi,
I’m struggling to transfer my music playlists and metadata (movie ratings, songs played, etc.) from an old Plex jail to a new one on my TrueNAS server. I need help to get my new server up to date with all my old data intact. Here’s the situation:
Setup:
- TrueNAS Version: TrueNAS-13.0-U6.2
- Old Jail: Named plexpass, running FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p9, stopped. Contains my music playlists and metadata (movie ratings, songs played, etc.).
- New Jail: Named Plex-Proper, running FreeBSD 13.4-RELEASE-p5, active, with Plex Media Server 1.41.9.9912-371133ff9 (PlexPass build).
- Access Tool: Using Bitvise SSH Client on Windows for SSH and SFTP to manage files.
Original Issue: My Plex plugin in the plexpass jail (older version) lost access to the newest latest updated apps etc.. I created a new jail (Plex-Proper) with the latest Plex version, but transferring the metadata from plexpass to Plex-Proper hasn’t worked, and I can’t find my playlists.
Actions Taken:
- Update Attempts:
- Tried updating the plexpass jail using the PMS_Updater script but got an “illegal variable name” error. Switched to bash and used a Plex token, but no playlists appeared post-update.
- Created Plex-Proper jail with the latest Plex version (1.41.9.9912) to replace the deprecated plugin.
- Metadata Transfer:
-
Copied the metadata folder (/mnt//iocage/jails/plexpass/root/usr/local/plexdata/Plex Media Server) to /mnt//plexpass-metadata-backup and then to Plex-Proper using Bitvise SFTP.
-
Transferred the database (com.plexapp.plugins.library.db), but playlists and metadata didn’t appear in Plex-Proper, likely due to version incompatibility (older Plex in plexpass vs. 1.41.9.9912 in Plex-Proper).
- Playlist Extraction:
- Queried the plexpass database using DB Browser for SQLite on Windows.
- Ran SELECT name, guid FROM playlists WHERE playlist_type = ‘audio’; but found no playlists table. The database contains tables like play_queues, play_queue_items, metadata_items, etc.
- Tried SELECT * FROM play_queues; but couldn’t identify playlists.
- Checked plexpass web interface (http://<plexpass_ip>:32400/web) after starting the jail, but no export option exists (Plex removed it).
- Other Attempts:
- Considered WebTools-NG and Soundiiz but preferred manual extraction on Windows.
- Backed up the database to /mnt//plexpass-db-backup.db and C:\PlexBackup.
Current Status:
- Plex-Proper is running, but lacks playlists and metadata.
- plexpass is stopped, but its database still contains my data. I can’t export from it. I guess I could manually do it? KMN. I care more about the music playlists that anything.
- No playlists found in the database (dunno where properly located?)
End Goal:
- Have Plex-Proper running the latest PlexPass version with all my old metadata from plexpass:
- Music playlists (most critical).
- Movie ratings.
- Songs played (play history).
- Other metadata (e.g., album art, tags).
Questions:
- How can I extract music playlists as .m3u files from the plexpass database (play_queues, play_queue_items, etc.) on Windows using DB Browser for SQLite?
- Why is the playlists table missing? Are playlists stored elsewhere in an older Plex version?
- How do I ensure metadata compatibility between the old plexpass (unknown Plex version) and Plex-Proper (1.41.9.9912)?
- Any scripts or tools to simplify playlist extraction on Windows?
- Should I rebuild metadata by rescanning in Plex-Proper, or focus on database repair?
Additional Info:
- I have a PlexPass subscription.
- Music files are mounted in Plex-Proper (e.g., /mnt//music to /media).
- I’m comfortable with Bitvise SSH/SFTP but less so with complex SQLite queries.
Any help or step-by-step guidance would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.
