Plex and 11.2 upgrade

[LLeo]

I installed the current update of Freenas 11.2. The new GUI is nice. I mainly use FN as a media and file storage server (Plex and FileZilla) working from my Windows 10 Pro box.

Of course, with the upgrade I am informed that my Plex "jail" now must be managed through the old interface. Everything has been working fine in the "old" config. Naturally, I don't wish to make life any more difficult for myself with the new FN.

My question is this: Do I simply install the Plex into the new iteration? I have read some posts about "converting" the "warden" jails into the "new" Iocage jails or is that even possible? Do I then need to delete the "old" version so I can forget about switching back and forth every time I use Plex? (Of course, I'm not going to delete anything until I'm satisfied the "new" one works fine!).

I'm more of the Microsoft gui Windows kind of guy when it comes computer stuff. I've gotten along with minimal command line things with Freenas. But it did take me about a year to figure out from other posts how to upgrade Plex without waiting for the updates to catch up in FN . . . well, it finally worked when I cut and pasted the scripts because I seemingly never put the right spaces or back slashes in the proper places for a year! Story of my computing life!

So, I'm just asking for the basic recommended procedure without a lot of exotic ways (God bless you cmd liners!) to do it. I don't mind having to re-set up my storage in the new setup. I would consider it much needed practice anyway.

Thanks for any suggestions!

 

[ThreeDee]

plex plug in in new gui works perfect .. you can use the PMS_Updater.sh script if you need the latest greatest version of Plex instead of waiting for the plugin to "catch up". I was hesitant to switch from warden to iocage reading all the cmd line stuff to do this and that .. but the new iocage jails are pretty easy to setup and deal with. If I can get things working .. anybody can :p

 

[LLeo]

Update: I have successfully redone my FN 11.2 build with a new USB boot drive and retaining the previous stick. I downloaded the 11.1 version then upgraded again to 11.2 just to test the process. So far so good. I have also reinstalled Plex in the Iocage format. We'll see if it lasts. Now to figure out if I can convert the old "warden" info into Iocage format.

 

[zorin1us]

Update: I have successfully redone my FN 11.2 build with a new USB boot drive and retaining the previous stick. I downloaded the 11.1 version then upgraded again to 11.2 just to test the process. So far so good. I have also reinstalled Plex in the Iocage format. We'll see if it lasts. Now to figure out if I can convert the old "warden" info into Iocage format.

I'm in the same boat, I have the old Plex container, how did you go about upgrading it so it shows up in the 11.2 interface?

 

[ThreeDee]

I'm in the same boat, I have the old Plex container, how did you go about upgrading it so it shows up in the 11.2 interface?

Read this thread .. read other forum posts .. Warden .. IOCage ... Read man ... REEEEEEAD!!! lol

Search the forums ... this has been addressed many times now. If you get stumped with the several walk throughs on this .. give specifics on what you're stumped on. Searching the forums and reading up on the upgrade before I made the upgrade helped me out immensely in getting Plex, Tautulli, Ubiquiti software configured and running great in their own IOCage jails.

 

[LLeo]

I'm in the same boat, I have the old Plex container, how did you go about upgrading it so it shows up in the 11.2 interface?

By doing what ThreeDee suggested. I just haven't finished the journey and others pointing in the correct direction helps.

I'm not the finger-flinger these other guys are! What I did was install the new Plex instance as it will create a new instance in its own jail under IOCage with its own folder structure, etc. The "old" jails will still be there for now. It will not delete them. I'm a "learning" kind of guy (which is why I decided to tackle Freenas instead of an independent NAS box with a couple of HD's). I'm also a masochist but I also "surf" a lot to find answers. Journeys are just as interesting as destinations, too. Lawrence Systems vid on YouTube got me over one hump and now I'm onto finding the other posts ThreeDee is referring to. There here. You just have to find the ones you can absorb and understand. There is no "press one button and its fixed." I'm not in the same place with all these scripters and coders. I respect their knowledge and expertise, though. It's a different language. I understand a "word" here and there but stringing whole sentences together . . . not there yet!

For now, watch the referenced video and install Plex from the 11.2 plugin section per his instructions. (There may be others out there, but this one spoke to me the most.) And return to this "Plex for Dummy Noobs" section at will. We'll eventually figure this out!

Happy New Year to you knowledgeable forum members! You've blessed me in 2018 and I ain't going away!

 

[LLeo]

Okay. Had to start from scratch. All of my media files are stored on the main volume in named folders, i.e., Music, Movies, TV, Pictures, etc. Sure, it would have been nice to figure out all the scripts and coding to pop it back to where I was in 11.1 and earlier by migrating but it's taken me less time looking and absorbing strings of characters with/without spaces and punctuation marks since I have no clue what might happen when I hit "Enter" and wind up with a bigger mess than I already had. When I tried a couple of times re-installing FN 11.1 then upping to 11.2. I got to the point where I was getting a bad error every time I tried to install the Iocage Plex so surfing I went again. It seems remnants of the earlier Iocage jail were still hanging on. Since all of my data sets were independent in the main volume, I read a post somewhere about getting rid of the "old" Iocage data set and that was the key. I deleted (with fingers crossed!) and the re-install proceeded successfully. I now have my Plex set up consistently working.

I started FN back in the 9.3 era and had little to no trouble figuring out how to mount the folders properly. But, I think, in about 9.10 the process changed in the Plex procedure where the "Add Folder" started giving you the "wrong" folder tree to start and you had to type in"/media/music" which would the create the folder for you (and their was an implied path BEFORE "/media" which was invisible in the Plex process and would have led you to a better understanding and figuring out which folder was which in that directory. I figured it out eventually.

Now with 11.2, Iocage changes the game once again but not in a bad way . . . just a different way. It uses its /iocage/jail/plex/root/media/ as the mount points which MUST be created in the Jail>Mount points section of the interface with Plex NOT running at the time.
Plex will NO LONGER create that folder for you.; it must be done adding a mount point in your version of the path indicated in "Destination." I did so step by step, entered one mount point then fired up Plex and loaded that folder, rinse, repeat until all my Io cage folders contained the "shortcuts" to the main volume data sets of actual data. Lawrence Systems (who had his Freenas shirt on!) explained it although I did have to view it a couple of times before it sunk in enough into this noob mind.

Caveat: He also mentions about NOT being able to "slash" your way to the path. I'm not sure how he meant that but after a few minutes of trial and error, I think he was referring to the old Plex method of creating that folder. If you notice in that picture above, I was successful using the "media/photos" slash but that was in the "Jails>Mount Points>Edit" in Iocage NOT in the Plex interface! Mount points created the folder in the right place. Once that is created THEN when you do "/media/photos" in Plex it will start populating Plex. Then the rest of your Plex categories as you do them.

If you are trying to migrate your previous warden jail into the new iocage jail with your existing data, I can't help you. I researched and videoed until my eyes were blurring. I had this week off for the holidays and did what I could to figure it out. I am returning to work tomorrow (Jan 2) and do not even pretend to understand the underlying codes and syntax you guys who probably do this for a living have mastered and know like the back of your hand. My hat's off to you guys. I wish I could be you!

And as ThreeDee said above:".. but the new iocage jails are pretty easy to setup and deal with. If I can get things working .. anybody can." He converted me . . . and Lawrence Systems helped a bunch, too.

 

[ThreeDee]

Good to hear ..err ..READ! I didn't attempt to migrate anything either. I just Installed 11.2 and then re-did Plex from scratch reconnecting it to my existing data and what not. Took a bit to get all the metadata again (didn't bother grabbing anything out my Warden Plex to save time with IOCage Plex).

If you installed Plex via the plugin and you just gotta have the latest version sooner rather than later .. search PMS_Updater.sh

 

[LLeo]

Glad we figured it out. How is your music collection? I have almost 5000 mp3 files BUT "Artist" and "Album" only show up as "Various artists" or "unknown artist" in those two clumps under the "Grid" view. However, the "List" view does show the same files with "Title" and "Artist" correctly. Of course, no album cover just a black cover. Looking for that solution now. All the other Video or Photo libraries work as they should.

 

[ThreeDee]

most of my music got the metadata correctly from what I can tell .. even some oddball stuff at least got the artist correctly. I do have to hand select the correct metadata from time to time on my "videos"