Love this idea, I have my home server set to log on interactively on boot for a number of processes, plex included. Any software designated as a “server” should be run as a service.
How do i upvote this feature request?
this is close to the most important feature for me, except for the core features, i do not care for channels, live tv and all the other junk.
I will repeat again for anyone new on this thread who may have not gone back to previous posts here, that there is already a working PMS As A Service solution available and in use by many users - including myself -
See http://forums.plex.tv/discussion/93994/pms-as-a-service/p1
Shouldn’t really have to jump through hoops for something that should have been in place from day one. Call me paranoid but I am wary of using a 3rd party solution like http://forums.plex.tv/discussion/93994/pms-as-a-service/p1
The developers clearly know how to make services as there is one always running called PlexUpdateService.
@Paddyman321 said:
Shouldn’t really have to jump through hoops for something that should have been in place from day one. Call me paranoid but I am wary of using a 3rd party solution like http://forums.plex.tv/discussion/93994/pms-as-a-service/p1The developers clearly know how to make services as there is one always running called PlexUpdateService.
Absolutely agree. In my opinion, this is just lazy developers starting to write code in the context of their current user profile and now it’s just too much of a hurdle to move it to a service. We also want to use our machine for multiple purposes at the same time, so having things run as a service is more efficient. In addition, having a user constantly logged in (& potentially even auto-logging in) is not good security.
Yeah, the problem is that it has to be done from the beginning, but since they pretty much messed it up, it’d be a pain to convert an interactive process to a service. Well, writing a service is not that hard, but the permissions part (accessing media files, settings, etc) and everything else (user interaction with the server running as a service) would be too risky to deploy to general public, since it has a high probability of breaking existing clients. And it’s a shame.
I would love to see an official Plex service implemented. Either that or put an check box in the Plex installer so when the server installs it doesn’t set the option to automatically start at login.
There is a great third party utility for Plex as a Service ( forum post here ), but everytime I update you have to stop the service, update Plex, let it launch so you can disable “start Plex at login”, exit Plex, then restart the service. While it’s not time consuming it is rather annoying to have to do this for every update.
@a13kurt said:
. . . . . , but everytime I update you have to stop the service, update Plex, let it launch so you can disable “start Plex at login”, exit Plex, then restart the service. While it’s not time consuming it is rather annoying to have to do this for every update.
That i believe is only necessary if you use a different windows account to run the install from the one you run the service in. If it is the same account then the PMS As a Service wrapper should unset the start Plex at login
For me i do have admin account for install and non admin account for the service - so i do have to go through the motion of disabling auto login at start - but i opted for the registry edit instead after every install - see Option 2 here http://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/547864/#Comment_547864
@sa2000 said:
I will repeat again for anyone new on this thread who may have not gone back to previous posts here, that there is already a workingPMS As A Servicesolution available and in use by many users - including myself -See http://forums.plex.tv/discussion/93994/pms-as-a-service/p1
And I will repeat again for all the lazy developers that have been thumbing their noses at the users for years, that this is a SERVER program. SERVER programs MUST run as a SERVICE because we run them on headless SERVERS. I use the PMS service wrapper and - no disrespect intended to cjmurph whatsoever, since he took it upon himself to fix something that you for whatever reason refuse to do - it is utterly f’n annoying because it is a KLUDGE. It does not allow PMS to work the way it needs to. I can not do updates from the webgui, I have to log into my server, stop the wrapper service (then go into task manager and kill the process a few times because the watchdog keeps trying to restart it), then relaunch the actual server so I can update.
So again, on behalf of the thousands of users that you are disrespecting, I ask you what could POSSIBLY the the reason that you REFUSE to make it so PMS can natively run as a service. I bet you haven’t compensated @cjmurph at all for the solution that he wrote and that you keep leaning on. Maybe he should pull it down so you can stop sponging off him.
3 Likes
I agree that any software claiming to be a server app needs to act like a server app, or else it’s just a desktop app.
The PMS Wrapper is great and gets the job done, but it can be a royal PITA during an update.
Plex, please add the option to configure Plex Media Server as a service, giving the option to either run normally as it does already or as a service. The choice of what account to use, like the NETWORK SERVICE or another dedicated service account on the computer/server, would also be a nice addition if we chose to run as a service.
I would love to see this as a service as well. I am running windows server 2008 and want it to run as a dedicated service. I am planning on switching to linux as my server os and would love to see it run there as a service as well.
@BruceDeVries said:
I have posted a solution to running Plex as a service under Windows in another post. It works very well, but the Plex icon is not available in the tray. It’s easy enough to create links to duplicate most of what a right click on the icon will do. You need a program called AlwaysUp. It’s not free, but it works very well. They even have a setup guide here How to Run Plex Media Server as a Windows Service (2019/10/2016/8/2012/7/2008). I would still prefer a native Plex service, but this works for now…
I use AlwaysUp as well to run Plex as a service on my Windows 2012 R2 Essentials server. It works great, but the $49 price tag would keep many from considering it as an option.
@a13kurt said:
I would love to see an official Plex service implemented. Either that or put an check box in the Plex installer so when the server installs it doesn’t set the option to automatically start at login.There is a great third party utility for Plex as a Service ( forum post here ), but everytime I update you have to stop the service, update Plex, let it launch so you can disable “start Plex at login”, exit Plex, then restart the service. While it’s not time consuming it is rather annoying to have to do this for every update.
Using AlwaysUp, I do have to stop the Plex service to update PMS. However I have found that if I don’t launch Plex from the installer at the end of the update (just close the installer window) all I have to do is restart Plex from within AlwaysUp and there is no automatic start of Plex at login created.
+1
would love to have this
+1
still relevant
1 Like
@sa2000 said:
I will repeat again for anyone new on this thread who may have not gone back to previous posts here, that there is already a workingPMS As A Servicesolution available and in use by many users - including myself -See http://forums.plex.tv/discussion/93994/pms-as-a-service/p1
I think what we are all saying and keep saying for years is why does Plex not support this natively? Its 2018 and PMS is a server designed to be on 24 hours a day 7 days a week and as such it should be able to install out of the box as a service. We should not have to jump threw hoops to get this working
2 Likes
I run Plex on a visualized server and would prefer to run it as a service.
+1. As a service would be very helpful.
@RayIT said:
@sa2000 said:
I will repeat again for anyone new on this thread who may have not gone back to previous posts here, that there is already a workingPMS As A Servicesolution available and in use by many users - including myself -See http://forums.plex.tv/discussion/93994/pms-as-a-service/p1
I think what we are all saying and keep saying for years is why does Plex not support this natively? Its 2018 and PMS is a server designed to be on 24 hours a day 7 days a week and as such it should be able to install out of the box as a service. We should not have to jump threw hoops to get this working
This. I think it’s obvious that all those asking for this feature have searched and are well aware of the solution available. However, it’s not simple and trouble-free and this is a feature that should have been included in plex ages ago.
2 Likes
Probably because it messes up their automatic updates and there is a work around. Thus it’s lower on the priority list. Just guessing of course.
