PMS failing to read library DB after migration to new machine

Plex Media Server
1

Server Version#: 1.24.5.5173
Player Version#: 4.63.0
Recently built a new box and am trying to migrate my server from the old (Windows) to new (linux)
Followed the guide found here

we have tried the steps of that guide probably half a dozen times at this point. have confirmed that ownership and permissions are correct. the server is not recognizing or reading the existence of the DB files at all.

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every guide/FAQ i find just jumps to “edit your libraries to add the new destination” but i don’t have any libraries to edit because the PMS isn’t recognizing they exist??

please help, I have been fighting with this for DAYS and am going mad

2

This guide doesn’t cover cross-OS migrations. There’s essential information about your (old) server stored in the Windows registry; Plex expects those in the preferences.xml file on a Linux setup. I’m not aware of an automated mechanism to transfer that information… you might be able to manually transfer the respective parameters while your new server is stopped.

3

Recent server versions on Windows do write a Preferences.xml file with duplicates of the registry data.

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4

If I may add here?

I’m about to publish (another hour) a cross platform → Linux migration How-To

It should help with everything one needs to do in order to get Plex moved to a Linux host while preserving metadata

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5

Now available:

Under Linux Tips

Please now find:

Moving your PMS server to a Linux host

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Nice write up. I’ve successfully done this process many times and comparing to my own notes this matches almost identically. I do have two pieces of feedback …

  1. As well as a chown -R plex:plex /var/lib/plexmediaserver I typically also do chmod -R 755 /var/lib/plexmediaserver just to ensure nothing has the wrong permissions on any zip which has been extracted.
  2. I also login to plex afterwards and for ALL Authorised Devices I remove them including the server. I then reclaim the server again. This is all done using local IP of the PMS server and not app.plex.tv. Clients then need to re login again.

Anyhow, said I’d mention it in case you want to consider adding those or have comments on it.

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@anon5074910

Thank you for that immediate feedback.

I was just finishing the writeup and posting it.

I had hoped I covered everything.

Would you mind rechecking that for me? (I think I got it now)

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Looks good to me anyhow.

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Thanks for giving it the extra eyes. I Greatly appeciate it.

I’m sure there’s room to improve which will come over time.

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thank you all for the help. i am following the new guide (thank you ChuckPa) and I’ve run into an interesting issue. I do not have a preferences.xml I have tried making sure the old server is updated to the most recent version, but i still do not have the preferences file

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@bczretribution

Not having a Preferences.xml implies the permissions & ownership step was skipped by accident.

After you start the server,

Let it run 1-2 minutes

Then stop

Open a terminal window

sudo tar cfz /tmp/PlexLogs.tar.gz "/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Logs"

Please upload that tar.gz here for me to see what’s not happening.

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here are the logs from the (old) server, as it is the one not generating a preference.xml (for me to then transfer to the new server)Logs.zip (29.0 MB)
. it has been running overnight so should have all the data you need

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@bczretribution

You are showing me Windows log files ?

This is migrating from what to what ?

This looks like Windows – today.

Nov 07, 2021 04:07:38.682 [7564] INFO - Plex Media Server v1.24.5.5173-8dcc73a59 - Microsoft PC x64 - build: windows-x86 windows - GMT -05:00
Nov 07, 2021 04:07:38.682 [7564] INFO - Windows version: 10.0 (Build 19042), language en-US
Nov 07, 2021 04:07:38.682 [7564] INFO - 4 3292 MHz processor(s): Architecture=0, Level=6, Revision=15363 Processor Identifier=Intel64 Family 6 Model 60 Stepping 3, GenuineIntel
Nov 07, 2021 04:07:38.682 [7564] INFO - Compiler is - MSVC 1924
Nov 07, 2021 04:07:38.682 [7564] DEBUG - C:\Program Files (x86)\Plex\Plex Media Server\Plex Media Server.exe
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Yes this is windows logs. The old server that I am migrating from is windows. It is not generating the preferences.xml which, based on what was said above, it is my understanding is a critical part of the migration to the new server which is running on Linux.

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@bczretribution

Did you follow all the steps I listed here as written?

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yes i was going through that step by step and halted at the

  • Verify proper final directory structure

step, as my directory structure did not match your example. I went back to the source and found I was missing prefernces.xml and had a few extra folders you did not. i turned the old server back on and updated it to the most recent version of plex to try to fix this and get a new zip of the “Plex Media Server” directory, but nothing has changed, it still does not have the .xml etc.

image

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Windows doesn’t use a Preferences.xml

I guess I should now add the known differences from Windows
(That How-To is brand new)

Go ahead and continue with the process.

Please leave his screenshot here so I may reference it while updating the How-To

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my understanding was that as of the last version or so it now does create one on windows machines as well. but I will continue the process and see what happens

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It might do it now.

My last knowledge is based on the first attempt to do so where it was ultimately withdrawn pending refinement.

20

got it all working. thank you again everyone for the assistance.

for posterity: we discovered that the issue was that the version of PMS installed through snap does not seem to check/access/create/monitor the “/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support” location and so was not recognizing that we had placed data there. as soon as we installed the debian package from the website, everything worked as expected via the guide.