# Installing plex manually on FreeBSD **URL:** \ **Category:** Plex Media Server\ **Tags:** xbox-360, server-truenas\ **Created:** [April 11, 2020, 6:30pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349 "2020-04-11T18:30:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DanM158](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/danm158/32/182535_2.png) [@DanM158](https://forums.plex.tv/u/DanM158)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2020, 6:30pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/1 "2020-04-11T18:30:28Z")
Hello! I would like to ask someone, how can i install plex from .tar.bz2 file? I have xbox 360, and new versions have problem with streaming vids to it, so i have found old bz2 plexmediaserver file, which supports xbox 360. how can I install it, please? Im thinking about buying plex pass, but i dont want it till my freebsd server will run plex that supports xbox 360. PS: when i started the .sh file inside the bz2 zip, it worked, but i would like it to run as service and autostart with server. Sorry for my bad english, it is not my main language. Thanks for any replies! ---
**Author:** ![nx6](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/nx6/32/103992_2.png) [@nx6](https://forums.plex.tv/u/nx6)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2020, 6:47pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/2 "2020-04-11T18:47:51Z")
> [@DanM158](#): > > PS: when i started the .sh file inside the bz2 zip, it worked, but i would like it to run as service and autostart with server. You should be able to find directions on how to make a script run at startup online. This could also possibly be done as a cron job. ---
**Author:** ![mikec\_pt](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/mikec_pt/32/4651_2.png) [@mikec\_pt](https://forums.plex.tv/u/mikec_pt)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2020, 3:23am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/3 "2020-04-12T03:23:35Z")
you simply need to use FreeBSD packing system (`pkg install plexmediaserver`) or ports (`multimedia/plexmediaserver`). The tarball provided in plex.tv can be used and a start.sh script is provided but it mostly serves as a means to build the port/pkg. ---
**Author:** ![DanM158](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/danm158/32/182535_2.png) [@DanM158](https://forums.plex.tv/u/DanM158)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2020, 7:09am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/4 "2020-04-12T07:09:03Z")
Omg im so dumb I completely forget crontab. Now it works and autostarts at system boot! Thank you so much! Have a nice day. ---
**Author:** ![DanM158](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/danm158/32/182535_2.png) [@DanM158](https://forums.plex.tv/u/DanM158)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2020, 7:11am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/5 "2020-04-12T07:11:58Z")
I’m sorry but I don’t know how to make port from the bz2 package, Im not freebsd pro, but anyway, thanks! ---
**Author:** ![mikec\_pt](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/mikec_pt/32/4651_2.png) [@mikec\_pt](https://forums.plex.tv/u/mikec_pt)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2020, 10:32am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/6 "2020-04-12T10:32:45Z")
Just use pkg install then. If you don’t know how FreeBSD works that’s what you should go with, cronrab is not a rc.d script… it’s really not the best for this. ports are not hard and FreeBSD is fairly straight forward, but still if you’re new to this, pkg is your best bet. ---
**Author:** ![DanM158](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/danm158/32/182535_2.png) [@DanM158](https://forums.plex.tv/u/DanM158)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2020, 11:12am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/7 "2020-04-12T11:12:41Z")
like sudo pkg install plexmediaserver.tar.bz2? (i dont want to use newest bersion, i want the old from bz2 package to support xbox 360) ---
**Author:** ![mikec\_pt](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/mikec_pt/32/4651_2.png) [@mikec\_pt](https://forums.plex.tv/u/mikec_pt)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2020, 11:54am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/8 "2020-04-12T11:54:44Z")
> [@Installing plex manually on FreeBSD](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/3): > > you simply need to use FreeBSD packing system (pkg install plexmediaserver) or ports (multimedia/plexmediaserver). The tarball provided in plex.tv can be used and a start.sh script is provided but it mostly serves as a means to build the port/pkg. The exact command was there, but that installs the latest available in the repo (by default FreeBSD targets what they call the “quarterly” repo, but yo can change to “latest”). This is all very sepcific to BSD though so if you need more help with how that all works, their handbook ([FreeBSD Handbook | FreeBSD Documentation Portal](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/)) or forums is likely where you will find best help! As I said above can’t install the tarball on plex downloads like that not, its not a “ready to install” package its a compress tarball of the binaries and libs! FreeBSD and FreeNAS use it to make the port and packages available to you! It wasn’t clear from the first post that you were looking for an older version, you’re best bet there would be to try to build the port for and older version and hope it works, but I can tell you it won’t be worth the effort as it will not work! You need a fairly recent PMS version for everything to fully work. The 360 app is not update since long ago because Microsoft dropped support years ago, they don’t even update root certs there which IIRC doesn’t even allow it to talk to servers securely, ofc you could drop security if its all LAN, but still doubt the client will fully work (I guess that’s what you found how and why you are looking for a older version). Its quite the dilema, I understand you’re problem, but a PMS version that old, will not work fully for sure and other clients wouldn’t be able to talk to it! Also the 360 didn’t really have great playback capabilities unlike the Xbox One and Xbox One X. If I can offer some advice that will save you a lot of time (And time is money), If you don’t have any other hardware for a client, a cheap “Fire Stick” or “Chromecast” is probably the best, or if bugget allows an nVdia Shield! Something “in the middle” would be the mi box. The fire stick it self is not expensive anyway! Another option which I would really not recommend is maybe us DLNA (not sure if the Xbox 360 supported it but I think so); ofc its not really a full client, but if it work you could keep on using the same hardware! ---
**Author:** ![mikec\_pt](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/mikec_pt/32/4651_2.png) [@mikec\_pt](https://forums.plex.tv/u/mikec_pt)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 11:43am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/10 "2020-04-13T11:43:07Z")
Yeah FreeNAS specific questions are best put in their own forums! But the OP doesn’t reffer to FreeNAS specifically and using pkg/ports is the same in both (ofc the recommend way in FreeNAS is plugins but we didn’t’ even get into that 😛 ) FreeBSD, or a any other FreeBSD based system here would make much difference indeed!! Do note that we only claim to support FreeBSD 11.2 and try do do our best to keep it FreeNAS compatible since its our main user base when it comes to BSD. Its nice to have user’s feedback on other products and hopefully since its just BSD at least the pkg and port should work fine, that said if things break you are own you’re own. I got a bit off topic though, the fact is for what the OP wants here, there’s really no perfect solution! (FYI this was in reply to a post that seems to have been deleted 🤔) ---
**Author:** ![bjs59](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/bjs59/32/102957_2.png) [@bjs59](https://forums.plex.tv/u/bjs59)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 11:54pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/11 "2020-04-13T23:54:59Z")
Yeah, brain fart and senior moment, all at the same time… I swore I read FreeNAS in the OP and went to town… Then after I posted, I reread the OP, and realized my mistake… Tried to hit delete before anybody caught it… lol… ---
**Author:** ![redonyx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b38774/32.png) [@redonyx](https://forums.plex.tv/u/redonyx)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2020, 1:58am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/12 "2020-04-23T01:58:21Z")
Hi Mike, Just seen this post, forgive me if this is a dumb question but how do you change freeBSD from quarterly to lastest? ---
**Author:** ![bjs59](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/bjs59/32/102957_2.png) [@bjs59](https://forums.plex.tv/u/bjs59)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2020, 10:38am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/13 "2020-04-23T10:38:45Z")
It’s not hard, you just need to place a file in _/usr/local/etc/_ I believe… Do a search on the [FreeBSD forum](https://forums.freebsd.org) for “quarterly” and “latest”… You will find the specific path, file name, and contents of the file to change which port tree you pull from… If you have problems finding it let me know… Don’t forget to update your port tree with “_portsnap_” after you make the change… ---
**Author:** ![mikec\_pt](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/mikec_pt/32/4651_2.png) [@mikec\_pt](https://forums.plex.tv/u/mikec_pt)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2020, 1:35pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/14 "2020-04-23T13:35:09Z")
Actually if you just look in `/etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf ` it tells you how! > ```auto > # create a /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf file: > # > # mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos > # echo "FreeBSD: { enabled: no }" > /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf > # > > ``` in the same way you can set `enabled:no`, you can also just set ` url: "pkg+http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/latest"` or anything else for that matter. You can actually change the /etc/ file but that will be overwritten in future updates; changes on /usr/local/etc/ however always stick after OS updates; ---
**Author:** ![redonyx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b38774/32.png) [@redonyx](https://forums.plex.tv/u/redonyx)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2020, 5:39pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/15 "2020-05-11T17:39:32Z")
really sorry, but you have lost me there. i have also not had much luck in finding out how to change it to lastest. also i did try portsnap update, but i keep getting an error "you must upgrade the ports-mgmt/pkg port first ". ---
**Author:** ![mikec\_pt](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/mikec_pt/32/4651_2.png) [@mikec\_pt](https://forums.plex.tv/u/mikec_pt)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2020, 7:45pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/16 "2020-05-11T19:45:04Z")
tl;dr `mkdir -p /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos` make sure inside: /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf you have `FreeBSD: { url: "pkg+http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/latest" }` Also run `pkg update` after the file is changed! I’ve you’re not very familiar with FreeBSD and pkgng or shell commands in general, I would advice you stick with the plugin, but hopefully those instructions are easy to follow and you won’t have to do it again! ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/plex/original/3X/2/a/2acb9765406f63293d357b4ec509ec39aa28f2ad.png) [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2020, 7:45pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/installing-plex-manually-on-freebsd/572349/17 "2020-08-09T19:45:15Z")
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