Is creating a backup of the "/Plex Media Server" folder enough to restore Plex after a reinstall?

Mannekino

Patron
Joined
Nov 14, 2012
Messages
332
I'm currently figuring out how Plex works and I also want to know the proper procedure for restoring my Plex server in case I have to do a reinstall of my Plex jail for example. I just tested this by following the procedure listed below.
  1. Make a copy of the the /Plex Media Server folder
  2. Destroy the Plex jail
  3. Install it again from the web UI
  4. Stop the jail and configure it exactly like as it was before
  5. Create the same mount point so Plex could access my media content again and set appropriate access rights
  6. Restore the copy of the /Plex Media Server
  7. Start the jail
So far it looks like everything is working properly. I immediately was logged in again after launching the web app. All the settings seems to be the same and I could play my content.

Am I missing anything?
 

DrKK

FreeNAS Generalissimo
Joined
Oct 15, 2013
Messages
3,630
That sounds right. You probably don't even need all of the "Plex Media Server" folder, only certain parts of it.
 

millst

Contributor
Joined
Feb 2, 2015
Messages
141
Yeah, you just need your metadata folder. I believe I just maintained the contents of /usr/local/plexdata the last time I rebuilt mine. However, mine is probably a little different since I run a jail with the Plex package installed instead of the plugin.
 

Mannekino

Patron
Joined
Nov 14, 2012
Messages
332
I think the manual on the Plex website is outdated. There is no folder ${JAIL_ROOT}/var/db/plexdata/Plex Media Server/ as stated on this page. This folder is located at /Plex Media Server/. Maybe that was the location prior to FreeNAS 11.2. I see that the Preferences.xml is located in that folder also. So I'm good as far as I can tell with just creating a copy of the /Plex Media Server/ folder.
 

Jailer

Not strong, but bad
Joined
Sep 12, 2014
Messages
4,976
Or you could create a dataset for the metedata and mount it to your jail.
 

Mcfluffels

Cadet
Joined
Apr 5, 2018
Messages
5
Or you could create a dataset for the metedata and mount it to your jail.
Can you please provide links to a tutorial for this?
 

Grinas

Contributor
Joined
May 4, 2017
Messages
174
I did a backup of the ${JAIL_ROOT}/var/db/plexdata/Plex Media Server/ when moving from warden jail to iocage jail. The copy appears to have worked but not fully as it has my user settings but none of my libraries have been imported. I had to manually add each library. There locations are the same as in the warden jail so not so sure what this happened.

The meta data for each file (series/movie) is that contained in the plexdata directory or the series/movie location. I have edited a lot of the poster and stuff as many of my series/movies get matched incorrectly
 

NasKar

Guru
Joined
Jan 8, 2016
Messages
739
You could try my script to backup and restore your plex data. It originally was setup to follow Pentaflakes install setup with the data in a separate directory mounted to the jail. In my cases /mnt/v1/apps/plexpass. If you give it a try let me know how it worked for you.
 

Hawkins

Dabbler
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
42
Do the backups save my movie "Sort Titles". I update the Sort Titles to make sure movies in a series show up in Chronological Order vs. Alphabetical.

Can anyone confirm?
 
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