I finally found a use for my ECS Liva mini PC; It’s going to be the Plex Media Server for my RV.
I’ve been using Plex for a few years and love it. I have some experience with Linux, but I’m definitely not a guru. What I’d like to do is sync the media folders between my primary PMS and the “mobile” PMS. We always bring the RV to the house to pack and prepare for our travels, so I’d like it to sync only then, and not over the internet. I can easily connect the TravelNet to the HomeNet, although there will be a NAT router between them. Basically, I want to sync my media folders from PMS on WHS2011 to the travelling PMS on Lubuntu. I’d prefer it to be automatic, as I plan to leave the mobile PMS headless.
I have used Plex’s built-in sync to preload content onto Plex clients, and even my old Nexus 7 (2012) works fine to direct stream to my roku, but I’d rather take all the media than have to decide what to take each trip. Oh, and Plex Web doesn’t give me the other servers in the sync to dropdown? Would be sweet if it would, as that would be a one-click solution.
Would it be better to run a Plex Client instead of Server on the mobile unit and just use Plex’s built-in sync?
The answer is Trakt.tvhttps://trakt.tv
I use it to sync between Plex and Emby and it works quite well. It should work just as well between two Plex servers.
@Elijah_Baley said:
The answer is Trakt.tv https://trakt.tv
I use it to sync between Plex and Emby and it works quite well. It should work just as well between two Plex servers.
That will only sync watched state however if I’m not mistaken, sounds like the user wants to be able to sync files between servers as well, which is there is currently no functionality for. I could be wrong though, if only watched state is needed then this is what you’d want.
Content sync is what I’m looking for. Before we got the motorhome I’d played with OpenELEC with Plex Home Theater, but I’d since repurposed the Liva and now it seems OE has gone toward embedded (RPi, et al). They had a generic x86/64 .img, but after installing from the bootable usb it would fail on reboot (no bootable partition). Perhaps the eMMC support isn’t up to snuff (though I don’t recall any issues when I first used OpenELEC with PHT a year or two ago).
I’d decided I’d go with PHT until I see that’s been sunsetted. I just need a client that will run on GNU/Linux or a standalone system that acts as a Plex client. So, now that OpenELEC isn’t working for me and there’s no PHT either, is the “embedded” Plex Media Player the answer?
You can check out Plex Media Player (replacement for PHT).
Third party options would be OpenPHT, which took over development of PHT, and Kodi using the Plex for Kodi plugin. None of these options have any Sync ability for content however.
Laying this information down for anyone in the future.
Syncthing would be a good use for this. You do not need to maintain anything beyond the initial setups. Sync thing is free, secure., and serverless
As they describe it.
Syncthing replaces proprietary sync and cloud services with something open, trustworthy and decentralized. Your data is your data alone and you deserve to choose where it is stored, if it is shared with some third party and how it’s transmitted over the Internet.
I found synchting extremely slow and it doesn’t take advantage of local network speed. I experimented with a bunch of things, but I settled on rsync. I have a similar situation as I have a main server and a shield TV server that I take with me when we travel. So I just have an rsync script keeping the two storage synchronized. I actually have Plex create optimized versions and I synchronize only the optimized folder.
For watching status I had to run a synchronizing script as trakt has too many limitations fit my case (for example it cannot be installed on unrooted shield)
I would love a method for syncing content between servers. i use google play music to keep my music in the cloud and i started using plex as a way to store and manage my music locally (offline). i would like to sync music onto my server at work so I’m not continuously using precious bandwidth for the same music over and over.
I’m in a similar position, with a home PMS and one in my motor home. I plan to use ResilioSync. I already use this to sync mpeg video from the RPi-based dashcam in the camper.
The only concern is the database. Syncing the media files is one thing, but unless you’re willing to add the media manually, you need to sync the database as well. Of course, the database is open all the time, so there’s a risk of corruption.
Curious why you would need to sync the databases. Wouldn’t just setting PMS to scan the media folders periodically (or you can start the scan process manually if you don’t want to wait) update the info in the second server?
I have 2 Plex servers. Recently one of them crashed. It was the one I watch from most often. They have the same information because I sync the media files with Bittorrent Sync. When I started using the other machine I had to try and remember which episode of a series I had watched as well as all my movies. If I were able to sync my watched and un-watched information I would have save myself a lot of trouble. I also had Trakt on both machines and for some reason it wasn’t working for me. I must have had in configured incorrectly. To begin with it will not update anything that you had watched before you added Trakt I don’t think.
I had considered using file system sync and letting the secondary Plex Media Server just scan media, however I often have to correct bad or missed matches. Enough that going back through and fixing them on the secondary would be tedious at best.
If anyone knows where the Plex server config and meta-data files are, eg. like the genre labels and tags that get detected and applied to media file galleries, I could work out a set of Rsync or Resilio Sync scripts and cron job configs to do the sync from there. If both the source and destination servers are on Linux, I may also be able to automatically trigger synchronization upon inotify file/folder change detection events.
