so i just installed linux and plex on a raspberry pi and want to move the plex install from the sd card or at least the metadata folders to an external hard drive containing the media, but i cannot find the plex media server no matter how hard i try i am short on space and dont want to spend even more money and time to set up the server on a bigger sd card
Search the entire machine for Preferences.xml.
it’s there somewhere.
once you find it, you can move it.
Then, remove the snap app and install from plex.tv/downloads
and create an override file which points to it
what do i do when i get an error message telling me that the install from plex.tv/downloads is incompatible no matter which version i try?
oh and could you give some pointers to where to go to find an explanation on how to create override file? i litterally just installed ubuntu for the first time and have no idea how to do that
which CPU do you actually have ?
raspberry pi 4 model b, so i think its arm 8
That is an ARMv8 CPU (64 bit)
do you have any Linux skills?
not at all, i managed to set up a remote connection but thats as far as my abilities go since im completely new
Running PMS on Linux requires the basic Linux admin skills.
We’re here to help but, please understand, we’re not equipped to teach.
We have a number of How-To guides (step by step) which will help you.
If you’re a quick study, given linux follows a pattern, you’ll start to piece it together quickly.
In support of that, any of the Linux tutorials / Commands Cheatsheet an admin should know (google) will be invaluable.
we also have a fairly extensive support pages on how to get things going.
Type “Installation” in the search and scroll down to Linux.
That’ll get you started.
Then, when you want to move that metadata to an external HDD, there’s a collection of Linux How-To’s (Linux Tips & Tricks) to get things done.
thanks a lot, googling havent given the greatest results since you are always brought to the same posts. but i finally managed to get to the media server install location after searching my computer led to no results multiple times.
is the fact that i have the snap store version of plex installed the reason that i get told that the download from plex.tv/downloads is incompatible or is that something that is caused by which version of ubuntu im running? all the guides i have seen online are for ubuntu 20.04 while the one i got is 21.0(something)
Correct. The SNAP package is an isolated (completely compartmentalized) server.
It can’t see any media which isn’t in your home directory. It’s ok for those with really small needs but if you have external media, you’ll probably want the full-up package.
Most of us discard what snap has done and start fresh.
The moment we do, we have direct access to where PMS is stored and we can put our media (HDDs or NAS folders) anywhere we want.
If you’re intent on staying with Plex (seems you are with a PlexPass), I recommend breaking from SNAP now before you become invested (CPU time and bruised forehead ) 
sudo snap remove plexmediaserver
then, download the package from plex.tv (the ARMv8 one)
cd ~/Downloads
sudo dpkg -i plexmediaserver-*.deb
That wildcard will only work reliably when you have one version of Plex in your downloads folder so be careful.
after that, you’ll want to type out the full file name
sudo dpkg -i plexmediaserver_1.24.2.4955-blah-blah-blah.deb
like that.
Once that installs. it automatically starts up
open http://127.0.0.1:32400/web (if where your keyboard is)
-or-
open http://IP.addr.of.Pi:32400/web from your computer browser
fantastic, just the kind of help i was looking for. you absolute hero. i have a lot of 4k movies that i have allready generated preview thumbnails for that would not appreciate trying to fit on a 32gb sd card
We can try to find it.
- STOP plex (the snap)
- on the command linee
sudo find / -name Preferences.xml -print
You should find only one and it should have a fragmented directory path which includes:
........../Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Preferences.xml
or very close to that.
Let me know what you get.
oh i allready found preferences after you mentioned that i should search for it, i did not find it previously when trying to do so with other path names that were given when googling. also googling stop snap applications only gives me uninstall guides and not anything about how to stop the process
ok i have figured out how to stop plex media server from running, i have uninstalled snap and installed the standalone download and am in the preferences xml file in var/lib/plexmediaserver/library/application support/plex media server/ and have tried to understand the linux tips guide you posted earlier without getting anywhere. mind giving some detailed instruction with a bit more explanation?
You don’t actually open the Preferences.xml.
The important step here was to find where it is.
If you’ve find it in
/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server then the rest is straight forward.
-
You first need to take the external USB drive and have it automatically mount at the same place each time. (Linux drive “letters” will change if you’re not careful. The steps given guarantees the drive will always be available at the same place – which is a requirement for PMS to work. – It needs to find its data every time)
-
First do this
In my example, I show one naming scheme. You are free to choose whatever you like as long as the names don’t conflict with existing Linux . Also, you should not mount in the /media folder until your skill level catches up.
-
After you’ve mounted the drive you’re going to use for the data, you next take my other procedure, substituting my direcdtory names for the ones you’ve chosen, and run through the commands.
-
What will happen is that you make a perfect copy of the existing /var/lib/plexmediaserver. This is our goal.
-
When that’s all done, we tell linux to switch to use it which is in the final steps of that whole sequence.
ok i figured out the /etc/fstab thing, but after updating it to say
# UNCONFIGURED FSTAB FOR BASE SYSTEM
LABEL=writable / ext4 defaults,x-systemd.growfs 0 0
/swapfile none swap sw 0 0
LABEL=system-boot /boot/firmware vfat defaults 0 1
# Addtions for external and internal drives
# Mount ExtHDD (ntfs) at /disks/ExtHDD for Plex
UUID=9AFC980BFC97E035 /disks/Ext HDD ntfs defaults,auto,rw,nofail 0 1
i get this error when i do umount and mount
# umount /media/william/ExtHDD
umount: /media/william/ExtHDD: no mount point specified.
# mount /disks/ExtHDD
mount: /etc/fstab: parse error at line 7 – ignored
mount: /disks/ExtHDD: can’t find in /etc/fstab.
and for some reason when i go into vi/etc/fstab i get a message about having multiple swap files that i cant delete with the expressions that should delete the files according to google.
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