So I have Plex Media Server installed on Windows 10, on an SSD. I have a single 4TB drive storing the data. I would like to wipe this SSD clean, and install Ubuntu onto it. Then set up Plex and keep my current Watched Status’ from the Windows install.
The main support document that everyone links here does not really describe in detail the steps needed for this specific situation. As I don’t have a new system to copy things too…I will be wiping the “source” system.
I am thinking the way described for the same OS will work, but I am worried.
Copy database while Plex is off, back it up elsewhere. Wipe system, install Linux, install Plex, turn plex off, copy database into correct folder…turn plex on…add new file structure folders…update library…delete old file locations…update library.
And somewhere in there fix permissions…but I am worried this is incorrect.
Keep in mind that the viewstates are stored by guid=
What this means is: if you use TheMovieDatabase to ‘match’ your movies, they have a guid from the TMDB. If you use ‘Plex Movie’, they have a guid from the IMDb.
If you used previously TMDB for movies, but are now switching to Plex Movie, your viewstates are relatively useless. So you must continue to use the same primary metadata agent as before.
If you keep that in mind, you can successfully transfer your view states.
I’d recommend you start first by getting Plex to work under Linux with a test library.
Once you are sure you understood how it works with file permissions etc, you can replace the temporary database with your backed up copy.
You will have to re-scan all your libraries - unless you edit the database directly and replace the former “driveletter/folder” file paths with Unix-style paths.
You may want to analyse the test-database file from your test installation to get an idea how these look like under UNIX.
@brendonwadey said:
I believe my choices for how movies and shows are matched are default, are they all the same on each platform, the default choices that is?
Yes. Unless you change them, the default agent for movies is always ‘Freebase/Plex Movie’ and for TVshows it is TheTVDB.
So I installed plex, setup permissions, shut down plex, added the drive that was from Windows with the Folder structures with media, started plex and added the libraries pointing to those places. Let it grab all new information just to be safe, shut down plex…copied the database file into the folder (I only copied the one .db file though)…I left what was in the folder and replaced the one file, not sure if that was correct.
Loaded plex, and things seemed almost correct, but many shows and movies were showing blank grey images. So I did a refresh all and it seems to have grabbed everything correctly, and my watch status are there. Hopefully all is well otherwise.
@brendonwadey said:
So I installed plex, setup permissions, shut down plex, added the drive that was from Windows with the Folder structures with media, started plex and added the libraries pointing to those places. Let it grab all new information just to be safe, shut down plex…copied the database file into the folder (I only copied the one .db file though)…I left what was in the folder and replaced the one file, not sure if that was correct.
Loaded plex, and things seemed almost correct, but many shows and movies were showing blank grey images. So I did a refresh all and it seems to have grabbed everything correctly, and my watch status are there. Hopefully all is well otherwise.
So, that worked? The paths to the media files are stored in the database as well. Windows uses drive letters for the paths so unless your external drive was mapped using a network path, it won’t match in Ubuntu and PMS won’t find your files?
If you still have the new database that was created, I would use that and go with the alternate method Otto linked above.
Yes it worked. Once the database was added back…I just had to edit the Movies & Shows folder, to point to the new location…then do a library update…then remove old windows locations…library update.
