Server Version#: 1.28.0.5973
Player Version#: Web
Synology DS920+ W/ DSM-7
I recently migrated my plex media server from QNAP to Synology NAS. It went relatively smoothly except for the metadata for my music collection is pretty sparse. I notice there are only two agents for artists and albums: “Personal Media Artists/Albums” and “Last.fm.”
There should be other correct? Where are they?
Have you checked in the library section Advanced settings?
You should find Plex Music there.
There are no agent settings in the library section even with the advanced toggle on.
I found the setting you were talking about under libraries. It is set to Plex Media but I’m still only getting a small fraction of metadata to show up in my music library after scanning several times. I just unchecked prefer local metadata. I guess we’ll see what that does. Maybe that accidentally got checked during migration. I thought all my settings would have stayed the same.
I tried unchecking prefer local metadata and refreshing metadata. That didn’t help at all. I’m at a loss.
When you migrated, how did you handle the symlinks which exist on QNAP ?
They need to be preserved as path-relative symlinks and not absolute links.
This way, when you put them in the Plex shared folder for subsequent import during installation of PMS on Synology, it will have valid relative paths to work with.
Not sure. I followed the instructions on plex’s website and other sources. I copied the entire plex media server folder and then the media, started the plex server on synology and relinked the new library folders. Everything (movies, tv shows, and music) appears to have linked properly. All the files are accessible and can be played on various devices. It’s just my music library metadata is a mess/missing.
There is an important distinction here.
COPY vs ZIP
– If you COPY, you can lose the association between media and metadata.
– If you ZIP, and then unzip, you’ll keep those associations.
On the Synology, Did you ?
– Create a “Plex” shared folder
– Create subfolders “Plex/Library/Application Support”
– Have the resulting files create the next level Plex Media Server (resulting in Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server) with all your files and metadata from there down?
I zipped to copy.
I was warned against creating a Plex floor for DSM-7. I was told that was the old way of doing it. Instead, I first installed Plex on the Synology and let it create its own folder structure. Then I stopped Plex and unzipped the contents of the Plex Media Server folder from QNAP into the Plex Media Server folder on the Synology.
Please clarify for me. (this is important)
On the QNAP, if you look at the file system structure,
/share/*/.qpkg/PlexMediaServer/Library/Plex Media Server
The directory you want is the Plex Media Server directory which is under Library.
On the Synology, this is where it’s important.
The old structure (DSM 6) is: Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server
To import an instance from another host, the documented method is to create Plex/Library/Application Support and put Plex Media Server in there.
Is this what you did?
I am asking this distinction because, during import, for a brief period in time, there will exist both:
Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media ServerPlexMediaServer/AppData/Plex Media ServerMy concern here, which I ask you to clarify:
Did you use the Plex shared folder or the PlexMediaServer shared folder?
For the first part, yes, that’s where I zipped the Plex data
For the second part, I used:
PlexMediaServer/AppData/Plex Media Server
I did not create my own Plex folder. I allowed the Plex server installed to create its own folder and move the data into that. I seem to recall that’s what the documentation advised me to do. I don’t remember where that documentation is off hand.
Like I mentioned, everything seems to be working fine except for the music metadata.
Using PlexMediaServer/AppData is where the mistake was made.
DSM 7 changed so much that we had to process all the metadata as it moved from DSM 6 to DSM 7.
This also applies to anything imported from another OS.
If you follow this procedure,
You put your metadata in the Plex shared folder structure.
The installer will import the data by performing all the processing.
When complete,
– Plex shared folder will be empty
– PlexMediaServer will contain the metadata
Points to remember
– The "PlexMediaServer shared folder cannot contain an AppData directory.
The installer will not knowingly overwrite an installed PMS server as it runs.
– When you start this process, Package Center will sit at “Installing” until all work is complete. DSM might give warnings about Operation Failed… Ignore them
– If you navigate away from the page, you won’t know when it’s done UNLESS you look at the ‘Migration.log’ file in “Plex” shared folder (appears after about 2 minutes when installing)
Thank you!
So it seems I will need to uninstall Plex, delete the entire Plex Media Server folder on my Synology, and start over using this method.
Too bad there isn’t an export/import process that simplifies this.
OK. I uninstalled plex again but kept only the “Plex Media Server” directory and made ssure permissions were set correctly on that folder. I manually installed again and it seemed to migrate. I got the migration log and everything.
When it completed I went into libraries and started changing those to the new media locations. It worked well for movies and TV shows. They are curently scanning and updating properly. Music however is not working. When I try to change update the library folder and save, it tells me it cannot be saved. I can’t change those settings.
And even before changing the directories for Movies and TV shows, the artwork was displayig correctly. Music was still not showing up correctly. I’m wondering if there is something wrong with the data zipped from QNAP.
Read/write for user Plex means nothing. You must give Full Control for System Internal User PlexMediaServer to the entire contents of the Plex shared folder.
The installer will display these error messages and instructions when it detects them
If you installed… AND… the “Plex Media Server” directory still exists in the Plex share –
You forgot to remove / rename PlexMediaServer/AppData
– I will not overwrite an existing server instance in PlexMediaServer
– Rename AppData to AppData.keep (a way to save what you have)
– Now uninstall the package & reinstall again.
Thanks! I figured that out. It installed and migrated. Scanning media at the moment. It appears to be done scanning TV Shows, but still missing a lot of metadata that was there on my previous server. Music is done scanning and there are less artists images than before I tried this new method. It seems to be stuck detecting intros for TV shows.
Give it time.
After it claims to be done, it’s still working in the background.
Given the files were copied , not zipped, a “Refresh All Metadata” is likely in order.
When moving from similar OS’s (DSM and QTS/QuTS are both Linux), in this case ‘tar’ or ‘zip’ are the preferred tools because of how metadata is stored.
This is where Refresh All Metadata will now go in and fill in what’s missing.
The files from the previous server were zipped not copied.
The dashboard shows it’s been stuck detecting intros for the same season of the same show for several hours now.
I have also tried several times to refresh the metadata of an individual artist. The album artwork eventually shows up but no artist artwork.
I would simply move that out from where it’s stored.
We can perform post morten analysis after
