Transferring Watched Status to New Install

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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Server Version#: 1.21.1.3876

I created a plex server on Ubuntu and I’m trying to move the watch status and ratings from a Win7 plex server to the new one. They point at the same media. Or they used to - the win7 one is gone and the ubuntu is on the same hardware. I saved the .db files before replacing it.

i followed the directions on https://support.plex.tv/articles/201154527-move-viewstate-ratings-from-one-install-to-another/ and How to transfer ratings and watched status to a Ubuntu installation from store? to insert the metadata_item_settings table into the library database. Other than a few false starts (read only files, forgetting to use sudo), it seemed to work. When I restart the plexmediaserver service and go into the library, it shows all my movies as unwatched except for one. it shows one movie as watched two years ago.

The location of the .db file was in var\lib… and that file only exists in one other place (usr\lib). I though maybe I hadn’t been as successful as I thought, so I exported the table from the db I had just imported into. Then I diff’d the import file and the export file. Virtually identical.

In Plex, I click on the Movies library and it shows all but one unwatched. When I click on the server name above the libraries, it shows me three TV shows that I’m half way through and it shows a list of recently added movies and all that is consistent with reality. So the server is reading that table, just not applying it to my two libraries.

When I was installing PMS, I had trouble getting my synology mounted in ubuntu and I created and deleted two Movies libraries until I sorted it out. Now I think that somewhere it expects my libraries to be 1 and 2 and they’re really 3 and 4. There’s nothing in metadata_item_settings that points to the library so I might be grasping at straws on that one.

Does anyone have any ideas on what I could try next?

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The process of moving to a new host is really easy.

  1. Turn off all automatic updating and Empty trash before final shutdown
  2. Make a ZIP of the source system’s Databases directory.
  3. Install PMS on the new host and let it run briefly then stop it.
  4. Go to /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Databases
  5. remove everything there
  6. Unzip the file created on the other system
  7. Change the ownership of everything to plex:plex
  8. Now start PMS
  9. FOR EACH Library section
    a. Add new new Linux path to the media
    b. Do not remove the windows paths yet.
    c. Allow it to scan and find all the media – indicated by the “2” (duplicate) on the poster.
    d. When this section is complete, Edit it again and remove the Windows path
    e. Save and allow it to again scan – removing all the duplicate indicators
    f. Manually Empty Trash, Clean Bundles, Optimize Database
    g. Proceed to the next library section, repeating until all sections done
  10. Re-enable automatic detection, scan, empty trash, etc which was disabled prior to the move.
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So start over? The source is gone so I can’t turn off automatic updating and empty the trash, but I did backup the Databases folder. Will that still work?

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Follow the procedure …

ONE CAVEAT.

  1. When you start PMS after you put the DB into position.
  2. IMMEDIATELY CANCEL SCANNING
  3. Go turn off everything you should have on the source system.

Now follow the rest of the media path updating.

With luck, you won’t lose anything because PMS will be busy with other things and not scanning.

It will be a race – so don’t delay.

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That worked. Thanks.

Apparently I didn’t have automatic scanning on. I raced to turn it off, but it was already off.

I never got the "2’ after adding the linux path, but it all seems to be working.

Thanks again.

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