Plex

[Harry Seaward]

I want to love FreeNAS but I run into snags at every turn. I wanted something stable to run Plex from because it crashed Windows 7 and Server 2003 daily. I was excited to see FreeNAS had a Plex plugin so figured it would be a plug-n-play solution.

Initially I got errors when trying to install the Plex plugin and a Google search for the error (don't remember what it was now and am now getting a different error) led me to conclude that I needed to set a name server address in the interface. Did that and now I get a message every 6 or 8 seconds that there was an attempt to modify permanent entry on my interface. Google search seems to indicate I can ignore this annoying error. Fine - Turned monitor off. But still couldn't install the Plex plugin with the same error as before.

I then read a post about manually setting up a jail for Plex and manually configuring Plex and the jail to play nice with each other. I got as far as trying to create the jail and get an error that it cannot find the template. (I tried to manually set the template to VirtualBox using the drop-down in 'advanced' mode - same issue.) I thought maybe it was a router/firewall issue so I set the NAS box as the DMZ in the router. No change. Now when I try to go to plugins I get 'no entry has been found' on the 'available' tab.

I'm running FreeNAS 9.10 stable and literally the only thing I have done since install is add a ZFS storage volume, enable and configure CIFS to access the ZFS volume and try to install Plex.

Is it really this difficult to get Plex to run on FreeNAS?

 

[adrianwi]

No :D

 

[nojohnny101]

No

I concur. Sounds you don't have some basic things setup in the global configuration page of FreeNAS for networking.

I followed this guide and it worked just fine:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...all-plex-in-a-freenas-9-3-jail-updated.19412/

Never tried it the plugin route.

 

[Valdhor]

I also concur. Plex plugin is terrible. To tell you the truth all of the plugins are terrible. Really, just don't use them.

The guide that nojohnny101 used is the same guide I used and it worked first time and is still working great.

If this is a new server then I would just start over. Re-image your boot device - It may have some corruption and import your vdev's.

 

[danb35]

To tell you the truth all of the plugins are terrible.

Seriously? What's wrong with the Plex plugin? Granted, it's easy enough to install it in a plain jail (how hard is it to do 'pkg install plexmediaserver'?), but what makes the plugin "terrible"?

 

[melloa]

Never had a problem with Plex plugin. Use it until couple months ago when moved all my applications to VirtualBox to let FreeNAS do what is supposed to: Be a NAS.

By the way ... so far I have not found a better NAS, so dedicate some time to understand and learn and you won't regret.

 

[Valdhor]

I have had never ending problems with plugins. From them stopping for no reason and cannot start again to the plugin saying it is running when it is not.

If you look out on the greater internet you will find many users having problems with plugins (It's not just me).

Maybe you have lived a charmed life and every plugin works for you. I guess, with plugins, YMMV.

 

[Jailer]

I have had never ending problems with plugins.

How much memory does your server have?

The only plugin issue I've run into was a transmission upgrade and it was because I waited so long to update it.

 

[melloa]

How much memory does your server have?

Server specs would really help :)

 

[adrianwi]

I think the plugins are a lot better of late, although I can't confirm as I stopped using them some time ago (when there were regular problems and long delayed to updates) and learned to set things up manually using many of the wonderful guides. Never looked back as these jails are rock solid, easy to update and just work!

Plex has to be one of the easiest, and can't be that much more difficult than the plugin, with the added benefit that you learn something about FreeNAS/BSD that could be useful generally administering your machine.

 

[philhu]

I installed the plex plugin jail environment. I even moved my old 113G/6,000,000+ db files database for a 5000 movie/tv show environment to the plex jail, restarted it and voila, came right up.

My only gripe is that when an update happens to plex, will it tell me? FreeNAS plex uses a different versioning scheme for the plex plugin version, fyi.

 

[adrianwi]

I think the update message reporting incorrectly was a Plex issue, which they appear to have resolved since 1.01 as I've seen a couple of messages to say and update is available, and after updating it says it's up to date :D

 

[Harry Seaward]

I followed this guide and it worked just fine:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...all-plex-in-a-freenas-9-3-jail-updated.19412/

I got as far as trying to create the jail and get an error that it cannot find the template.

 

[danb35]

I got as far as trying to create the jail and get an error that it cannot find the template.

You almost certainly have a networking issue--either routing or name resolution is failing. Try the following commands at the shell and post the result:

• ping 8.8.8.8
• ping google.com

 

[Valdhor]

Server specs would really help :)

Sorry, I have been meaning to get my server specs into my signature. Maybe this will get my A into G.

case: Supermicro CSE-846E1-R900B X8DTE-F
backplane: Supermicro BPN-SAS2-846EL1
motherboard: Supermicro X8DTE-F (2 x Xeon E5540)
RAM: 72GB ECC
HBA: M1015 flashed to IT mode
vdev: 12 x Western Digital Red 4TB in RAIDZ3
FreeNAS 9.10 (Have to get exact version)


BTW. philhu - i need to pick your brains about getting Bacula working.

 

[nojohnny101]

Did you see @danb35 message?

While you are at it, what are your global settings in the gui for networking?

 

[philhu]

Valdor. Pm me. I just got bacula to work in a jail completly. Doing my first backup on it

On plex. Networking. I gave the jail a static address on the main subnet when the jail was created

 

[Harry Seaward]

I started over with FreeNAS. Fresh install and all is well. Plex plugin installed and works great.

 

[nojohnny101]

I started over with FreeNAS. Fresh install and all is well. Plex plugininstalled and works great.

Glad you got it working.

 

[sremick]

My only gripe is that when an update happens to plex, will it tell me?

FreshPorts will. Just subscribe to the pms port there and then you'll get email notifications. That's what I do. Although the Plex web update notification does seem to work now (finally) if you happen to dig to that part of the GUI, that's still far more passive than the FreshPorts email alert.