Still learning technical tips and tricks, and id like to know what are the actual benefits of running plex server as a service as opposed to the regular install?
My current setup is as follow:
I run my server on a headless windows machine in location “A” which i access remotely now and again for servicing via windows remote desktop. I’ve set the machine to always logged itself back in following a reboot of any kind then immediately launch a screen saver which requires a password. The only time i lose access to my server is when the machine is physically shut down.
All of a sudden my UNC path shares are no longer accessible. I’m getting an error
“Please check that the file exists and the necessary drive is mounted.”. If I ran plex in a regular way, not as a service, everything is fine. Does anyone has a solution for this?
Thanks
What user is the plex service running as? does that user have permission to access those network shares? If you log in as that user, can you access the network shares?
plex server is running as an admin account on a windows machine. When I login as that account, I can play the same files directly with no issues but plex complains.
btw, I tried mapping feature too and it didn’t help.
I’ve also added a new test library with a new folder and dropped a sample video file there. Plex simply does not see the folder and shows the library is empty.
All server libraries are set up using UNC paths. I’ve also created one for testing using a mapped drive feature of the service.
To answer your question, the share is accessible both using mapped drive and unc paths just fine and the videos can be played directly. If I disable plex service and start plex in a normal way on a start up, the videos played in plex with no issues.
The problem is isolated only to running Plex as a service.
Hi @sashi2 ,
Are you using the remote machine name or ip address in your unc path? I wonder if resolving the name is the problem. If you’re using the name, try and use the ip address and see if it works.
It was worth checking but that was not the issue. I’ve set up a library with the IP in the path instead of a a name and plex didn’t see it if it ran as a service
Planning to rebuild my server (which is currently running PMS as a regular app with a user that’s always logged in) and I want to run it as a service this time. Are there still limitations with transcoding or anything else if I use this tool?
I’ll still be using Windows 10 Pro and logged in with a user account, but I want to run PMS as a service with a different (admin) account. I have onboard Intel graphics and don’t usually transcode, but I just want to know if I’ll be losing any features.
The whole idea of the PMS as a service is you don’t have to have an always logged in user to keep the program running.
Running a service with an administrative level account when you don’t need administrative level privileges is never a recommended idea in terms of security.
Not an expert, but not sure what relevance the onboard graphics and transcoding or lack thereof has to do with the PMS as a service. PMS as a service simply runs Plex without a user being console’d in.
Don’t run PMS as an admin. It’s not necessary and potentially dangerous.
Running Plex Server as a system service prevents you from using the hardware video decoders. If you need those, you better don’t run PMS as a windows service.
(Yes, it’s a Windows architecture restriction.)
Thanks. It’s working great right now as a regular user, but I want to be able to do two things:
Set up read-only file permissions (at the NTFS level) for regular users on my media folders, but allow the Plex client to delete files when I’m logged in as my Plex admin account
Update PMS without being prompted for UAC. Right now, it’s installed in Program Files so it requires elevation when I install an update. However, since I use an admin credential to do this, it tries to run PMS (“Start Plex Media Server at login”) for that user.
I guess I could just give delete permissions on the media folders for my non-admin account, but I want to avoid that if I can.
For #2, is it possible to install PMS in the user profile folder, rather than Program Files? Or what’s the proper way to install it so it can be more easily updated?
just create a different set of user permissions for the PMS user account, which include the right to delete and change files. (You might want to restrict these to a few folders only. I for one am only granting Plex write permissions to my DVR library, so it cannot wreak havoc in my regular movie and tv show libraries where I have my carefully ripped, recoded and remuxed files.)
updating Plex is taken care of by the helper app which is described in the first post of this thread. It runs itself as admin, so PMS doesn’t have to. (quite similar to the regular “PMS updater service”, which handles updating Plex when you trigger it in Plex Web)
Ah, I didn’t know about the Plex Updater service. I didn’t see that already installed on my server, must’ve been too long since I tried to update the easy way.
not the developer and not contesting it hasn’t been updated in a while - but what needs changing / what isn’t working about it? The fact that it is 3 years old doesn’t mean it’s broken. Just because Plex updates every other day and breaks more than they fix doesn’t mean PMS service has to do the same lol
