I installed Plex Media Server on my Mac Mini and host many movie libraries.
I purchased a Synology NAS and would like to install Plex on the NAS since Synology recently discontinued their DS Video app.
The use-case that I have is I want to continue to use my Plex Media Server on my local Mac Mini computer, and also setup Plex on the NAS to provide various movies/shows from the NAS. In other words, I’d like to access Plex app from my iPhone or any Plex client and be able to access movies/shows from either my Mac Mini or from the Synology NAS
I installed Plex Server on the Synology NAS and after logging in my Plex account, I can see all various movies/tv libraries that are on my Mac Mini. I added a folder of movies from the Synology NAS and after that, I can access the movies/shows using any Plex client. However, if I shut off my Mac Mini, I can no longer access the movies that are hosted on the Synology NAS.
What I’d like is to ensure that I can access the movies/shows from the Synology NAS even when my Mac Mini is powered off. Is there a way to configure Plex Server and client so that I can access movies/shows from either the Mac Mini or Synology NAS?
Shutdown all Plex servers, except for the server running on the Synology NAS.
Then open your browser and type in: http://NAS-IP-Address:32400
Make sure the NAS Plex server is logged in and claimed.
Then go to Plex Settings and select the NAS server from the drop down menu (on the left about midway down).
The image above shows 3 servers DiskStation, PlexStation & ROGStrix, in your case you would have 2 servers, the Mac Mini and the Synology Plex servers, select the Synology server.
Then scroll down to Manage > Libraries and add any libraries to the NAS server that you need to and make sure you check Manage Recommendations for any libraries you have added, so they will appear on the Home page etc.
Next, go back to the Plex Home page and move the mouse all the way to the left to reveal the library menu and scroll down and click on More.
Look for the Synology Plex server in the list and pin any libraries you wish to see on the home page for that server.
Once you have done that, go back to the home page and you should be able to select the libraries on your Synology Plex server even when the Mac Mini or any other server is shut down.
I followed the instructions and everything is working great. So now I have two servers, one on my Mac Mini with movies stored on a DAS, as well as a second Plex server on my Synology NAS with movies stored on the NAS. It’s wonderful and exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much for your assistance. Much appreciated.
I’m able to access movies that I store on the NAS through Plex. I’m trying to do the same thing with my audio files and none of my audio tracks appear in Plex. The following is my current setup. Would you have any suggestion on how to correct the situation?
Control Panel> Shared Folder> PlexMediaServer> Permissions: I enabled read/write to the local users that I want to access Plex.
File Station> music: I stored all my audio tracks in the folder File Stastion> music
Plex Media Server> I setup a library called Synology Music and added the folder: /volume1/music
Can you suggest anything else that I need to do to enable my audio tracks to appear in Plex? At the moment, none of my audio tracks appear in Plex in the new library and I don’t know what else to do to set this up correctly.
I restored the permissions. However, I wasn’t able to access any of my music through Plex even before I made this permission change. Now that I restored permissions and restarted the server, the music library that I setup is still empty. I am naming my music files as per the Plex naming conversion. PlexMediaServer has access to the files - read & write.
I’m still unable to see any of my music appearing in the Plex library. Any other suggestions?
I did a rescan of the library and no luck. I also deleted the library and recreated it, 5 times. Still no luck. I’m using the music folder at the root level of the NAS. All of the files are available from DS Audio and play fine. I’m trying to setup Plex to use the same folder music folder with all of my audio files. When I add the library, I select the same audio folder that is used form DS audio and the path shows up as /volume1/music
Is there perhaps a problem in adding a Plex library to the folder /volume1/music?
Possibly. This reads like a permissions problem, and Synology has been known to reclaim permissions, and deny access to other application, for their pre-created media folders.
Scan the music library one more time. Then pull the server logs and upload them to the thread.
I created a small folder in a shared folder on my NAS and copied a few music files there. Then I setup a new Plex audio library pointing to that folder and Plex found the files OK.
I have 160,000 audio tracks in the folder music which is the default shared music folder that is part of the Synology architecture. With DS audio, it finds all my audio files. With Plex, it doesn’t find any audio files at all.
It seems that either Plex cannot access the main audio files from the Synology audio shared folder or that perhaps I’m selecting the incorrect audio folder. When I setup the Plex library for my audio files, I had navigated to /volume1/music. Is this the correct folder or are the files stored somewhere else? If so, what would be the path? Is that folder perhaps not accessible to Plex at all?
I setup the permissions as indicated above. When I add the new library with the intended shared folder “Synology Audio Library”, I don’t see any sub-folders at all. After doing the Scan Library Files, there aren’t any files at all appearing in Plex (there aren’t any sub-folders appearing in the right pane of Add Folder section of the new library setup).
I did a test and copied audio files to a different shared folder which I use with Synology Drive to sync files. That folder is called “Household Documents”. So when adding a new Plex library with that other shared folder, the various audio folders appear as intended and after doing a library scan, the audio files appear properly in Plex.
Therefore, there seems to be some sort of a permissions or authorization to the shared folder on the Synology drive.
Note: I don’t want to use the Houseold Documents share since that share is setup as a two-way sync with my Mac computers and I don’t want the audio files to be synced to my local Mac hard drive (the audio files take 1.5 TB of space - OK on the Synology NAS though this doesn’t fit on my Mac internal hard drive).
There aren’t any parameters in Plex for folder permissions. The only option is to select folders to import audio or video files. The issue would therefore be some sort of a parameter or setting on the Synology NAS.
I tried to compare the settings of the two different shares and I don’t see any difference. I’m relatively new to Synology so I’m not sure that I’m looking at the correct area for permissions and settings.
Would you review and advise what permissions or settings would be required for me to enable on the share so that Plex can see the folders?
