Plex

RasPlex Installation using a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with Rii Mini i8+ Remote

nigel — Sat, 23 May 2020 09:49:25 +0000

RasPlex Installation using a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with Rii Mini i8+ Remote nigel Sat, 23/05/2020 - 10:49

Tutorial on how to install RasPlex on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with a Rii Mini i8+ remote control.

Download the RasPlex Image

The Raspberry Pi 3B+ is a little problematic for RasPlex which is borderline abandonware. There is no official GitHub image release for a 3B+, and attempting to install the latest 1.8.0 will result in the Raspberry Pi rainbow screen upon power up.

There is a long thread here that explains the problems with the 3B+ - however be warned the conversation gets seriously derailed with a nonsense focus on power supplies half way through. There is huge intimation that the fact that RasPlex doesn't boot on a 3B+ is because of the power supply issues. Disregard this - it doesn't boot on an official Raspberry Pi power supply either so power is not the issue!

Thankfully, albeit partially obscured by background noise, there is a link to a commit that does work. This is RasPlex-1.8.0.0-573b6d73-RPi2.arm.img.gz and can be downloaded from here.

Flashing the Image to MicroSD Card

I used balenaEtcher to flash the image to my MicroSD card although other tools are available. A little care is required here - I could've easily incorrectly selected the wrong media since by default balenaEtcher selected my SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.1 Flash Drive. I reselected the MicroSD which was in the card reader.

Boot the Raspberry Pi

Inserting the MicroSD card into the Raspberry Pi slot and powering up will now bring up the configuration screens for RasPlex. I didn't have to change any of the defaults - and it found my Plex server automatically as well! I elected not to enable pre-caching of the assets since my network is quick enough for the images to load practically instantaneously.

Once the RasPlex 'configuration' is complete, the system loads openPHT which is the user interface for the media centre - i.e. the Plex client.

Configuring openPHT

As I mentioned earlier, there is a Raspberry Pi 3B+ working image, which is what Ive used to build my system. It is imperative to ensure the system is pinned at that version and not automatically updated upon a reboot to a newer patch level. To do that change the settings by navigating to:

Left button -> Preferences -> Left button -> Down button (twice) -> Right button -> Down button (four times) to Software Update then untick the first option.

I also changed the keyboard to be uk, but apart from that there was nothing more to do.

Rii Mini i8+ Remote

Simply put, this 'just works'. It was already paired to its USB receiver before I used it in a previous Android TV project I've now abandoned for this project. I turned on the remote, inserted the receiver in a spare USB slot, and instantly it was sending keystrokes to the Raspberry Pi. Couldn't have been simpler.

Bill of Materials

Raspberry Pi	3BPLUS-R 1.4 GHz 1 GB RAM 64-Bit	£37.67
SD Card	LXSINO 32GB Micro SD Class 10	£6.99
Power	Aukru Charger 5V 3000mA Power Supply 3A	£9.99
Remote	Rii i8+ 2.4Ghz LED Backlit Mini Wireless Keyboard	n/a
	TOTAL	£54.65

The remote isn't available anymore, but models practically the same are for around £8.

blog terms

Hardware Raspberry Pi Plex

Move Plex Media Server to Linux VM

nigel — Sun, 18 Feb 2018 13:45:09 +0000

Move Plex Media Server to Linux VM nigel Sun, 18/02/2018 - 13:45

I've been playing with Plex Media Server for the last few weeks on my Linux laptop, and much to my surprise it seems to play back any video format I throw at it including DivX and XviD which is the format of a great many of my collection of movies. So buoyed by this I have decided to move the entire Plex configuration to a dedicated Ubuntu virtual machine which will reside on my Intel NUC I reviewed earlier.

My Intel NUC is headless, and whilst it is possible to create a VM image on the command line, it is much more convenient to create it on a GUI elsewhere and move it over to the NUC. To that end, I created the VM on my Mac knowing the network configuration would ultimately have to change when the VM is in situ on the NUC.

VM Installation

The steps are quite straightforward so there isn't much need for narrative. I had previously downloaded the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS server iso image (more of that in a minute).

I decided to go for 4GB RAM and 10GB fixed disk size which should be more than adequate.

Initial Network Connection

The initial network connection is set as above. We need a bridged network so I can use my pre-existing 192.168 network in my property. Obviously when the VM is moved to the Intel NIC the AirPort won't be a valid setting at that point - so we'll have to change it then.

Ubuntu 16.04 Installation

As mentioned previously, I had already downloaded the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS iso image which is selected for the installation above. Most of the installation screens haven't been captured for brevity because they are straightforward, but note I have selected openSSH server in the software packages to install - this is important since we will need to ssh into our headless Plex server.

We now need to edit the /etc/network/interfaces file to change the default DHCP IP assignment to static. Your configuration will obviously be different from mine here. I've elected to go for the address of 192.168.0.203 for my server.

nigel@plex-media-server:~$ cat /etc/network/interfaces
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).
 
source /etc/network/interfaces.d/*
 
# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
 
# The primary network interface
auto enp0s3
# iface enp0s3 inet dhcp
iface enp0s3 inet static
 address 192.168.0.203
 netmask 255.255.255.0
 network 192.168.0.1
 broadcast 192.168.1.255
 gateway 192.168.0.1
 dns-nameservers 90.207.238.97

Export the VM

I have already covered how to export a VM image in a previous blog here, so I don't need to go into too much detail in this blog. My VM has been exported and now needs to be copied to the NUC host machine using scp.

Nigels-MacBook-Pro:Documents nigel$ scp Plex\ Media\ Server.ova nigel@192.168.0.202:/home/nigel/VM/.
nigel@192.168.0.202's password: 
Plex Media Server.ova                                                                        100%  604MB   4.1MB/s   02:27    
Nigels-MacBook-Pro:Documents nigel$

Now log into the host machine and cd into the correct directory and import the VM.

nigel@devbox:~/VM$ VBoxManage import Plex\ Media\ Server.ova 
0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%
Interpreting /home/nigel/VM/Plex Media Server.ova...
OK.
Disks:
  vmdisk1       10737418240     -1      http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/specifications/vmdk.html#streamOptimized       Plex Media Server-disk001.vmdk  -1      -1
 
Virtual system 0:
 0: Suggested OS type: "Ubuntu_64"
    (change with "--vsys 0 --ostype "; use "list ostypes" to list all possible values)
 1: Suggested VM name "Plex Media Server"
    (change with "--vsys 0 --vmname ")
 2: Number of CPUs: 1
    (change with "--vsys 0 --cpus ")
 3: Guest memory: 4096 MB
    (change with "--vsys 0 --memory ")
 4: Sound card (appliance expects "", can change on import)
    (disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 4 --ignore")
 5: USB controller
    (disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 5 --ignore")
 6: Network adapter: orig Bridged, config 3, extra slot=0;type=Bridged
 7: CD-ROM
    (disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 7 --ignore")
 8: IDE controller, type PIIX4
    (disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 8 --ignore")
 9: IDE controller, type PIIX4
    (disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 9 --ignore")
10: SATA controller, type AHCI
    (disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 10 --ignore")
11: Hard disk image: source image=Plex Media Server-disk001.vmdk, target path=/home/nigel/VirtualBox VMs/Plex Media Server/Plex Media Server-disk001.vmdk, controller=10;channel=0
    (change target path with "--vsys 0 --unit 11 --disk path";
    disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 11 --ignore")
0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%
Successfully imported the appliance.

Now we need to modify the ethernet card settings and the audio as per my previous blog

$ VBoxManage modifyvm "Plex Media Server" --nic1 bridged --bridgeadapter1 enp3s0
$ VBoxManage modifyvm "Plex Media Server" --audio none

Ok now we need to be sure we are in the correct directory and start up our machine. Once this has been done, it will be possible to ssh into it.

$ pwd
/home/nigel/VirtualBox VMs
$ VBoxHeadless --startvm "Plex Media Server" &

Let's try to log into 192.168.0.203

nigel@nigel-Aspire-VN7-793G:/etc$ ssh nigel@192.168.0.203
The authenticity of host '192.168.0.203 (192.168.0.203)' can't be established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is SHA256:BLRRmyijEFgtS+KnkXQUudkdsMskpLrzR19zBugQ2ww.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.0.203' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.
nigel@192.168.0.203's password: 
Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-87-generic x86_64)
 
 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage
 
127 packages can be updated.
64 updates are security updates.
 
 
Last login: Sun Feb 18 19:58:43 2018 from 192.168.0.12
nigel@plex-media-server:~$

Success!

fstab entry to connect to CIFS partition

My FreeNAS server has a CIFS mount point which contains my media collection. It would therefore be useful for the drive to be automatically loaded on boot. A prerequisite for this is the cifs-utils package which will need to be installed.

$ sudo apt-get install cifs.utils

Next we need to create the mount point directory which will be /mnt/freenas

$ sudo mkdir /mnt/freenas

It would useful to check we can connect first on the command line. So lets type out the required mount command, but first we need to create a credentials file for FreeNAS. This will be owned by the root user and should be placed in the root user's directory and made read only for root.

# cat .cifs 
username=xxxxxx
password=xxxxxx
# ls -las .cifs
4 -r-------- 1 root root 39 Feb 18 21:37 .cifs

Now the actual mount command and a follow up directory listing to make sure it has been mounted correctly.

$ sudo mount.cifs //192.168.0.200/personal  /mnt/freenas    -o vers=3.0,credentials=/root/.cifs,uid=1000
$ ls -las /mnt/freenas | grep Documents
     0 drwxr-xr-x 2 nigel root         0 Aug 14  2017 Documents

Now we need to unmount this and add the entry to the /etc/fstab file.

$ sudo umount /mnt/freenas
$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
#                
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=600eb961-4caa-4a24-b8cf-c35efdd71ca4 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=523ed080-41af-4dab-839f-070f40c26ada none            swap    sw              0       0
 
# CIFS FreeNas mount
//192.168.0.200/personal        /mnt/freenas    cifs    credentials=/root/.cifs,uid=1000,vers=3.0       0      0
$ sudo mount -a
$ ls -las /mnt/freenas | grep Documents
     0 drwxr-xr-x 2 nigel root         0 Aug 14  2017 Documents

That's another job done! Finally we can think about moving the Plex configuration over to our new VM.

Commence the Plex Move from Source to Destination

Firstly navigate to Settings->Server->library and disable the setting Empty trash automatically after every scan as shown above. Save this setting change.

Stop the Plex Media Server running on the source machine. This is achieved on the command line with

$ sudo service plexmediaserver stop
[sudo] password for nigel: 
$ ps -ef | grep plex
nigel     6274  1647  0 09:51 pts/1    00:00:00 grep --color=auto plex
$

Note I double checked that there were no Plex services running just in case.

install Plex on Destination Machine

In my case my destination machine is a VM on my Intel NUC so let's see if the VM is currently running.

nigel@devbox:~$ VBoxManage list vms
"badzilla-d8" {86af2c61-3b68-47c5-a71e-8f45ac196cbe}
"Plex Media Server" {5efa7e7b-ae92-45a9-8244-bae451b53c0a}
nigel@devbox:~$ VBoxManage list runningvms
nigel@devbox:~$

So the good news is it is there. The bad news is it isn't currently running. Let's spark it up.

nigel@devbox:~$ VBoxHeadless --startvm "Plex Media Server" &

Ok let's ssh into the VM so we can install the new copy of Plex

nigel@devbox:~$ ssh nigel@192.168.0.203
The authenticity of host '192.168.0.203 (192.168.0.203)' can't be established.                                  
ECDSA key fingerprint is SHA256:BLRRmyijEFgtS+KnkXQUudkdsMskpLrzR19zBugQ2ww.                                    
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes                                                      
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.0.203' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.                                  
nigel@192.168.0.203's password:                                                                                 
Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-87-generic x86_64)                                               
 
 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com                                                                      
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com                                                              
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage                                                                 
 
19 packages can be updated.
10 updates are security updates.
 
 
Last login: Sun Feb 18 22:11:59 2018 from 192.168.0.14
nigel@plex-media-server:~$

On a separate machine, download the latest Ubuntu 64 bit Plex Server, and scp it into the destination machine file system.

nigel@nigel-Aspire-VN7-793G:~/Downloads$ scp plexmediaserver_1.11.3.4803-c40bba82e_amd64.deb nigel@192.168.0.203:/tmp
nigel@192.168.0.203's password: 
plexmediaserver_1.11.3.4803-c40bba82e_amd64.deb                               100%  104MB 817.5KB/s   02:10    
nigel@nigel-Aspire-VN7-793G:~/Downloads$

Now switch back to the term window of the destination machine and install Plex.

nigel@plex-media-server:~$ sudo dpkg -i /tmp/plexmediaserver*.deb
[sudo] password for nigel: 
Selecting previously unselected package plexmediaserver.
(Reading database ... 93857 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../plexmediaserver_1.11.3.4803-c40bba82e_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking plexmediaserver (1.11.3.4803-c40bba82e) ...
Setting up plexmediaserver (1.11.3.4803-c40bba82e) ...
Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/plexmediaserver.service to /lib/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service.
Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-19) ...
Processing triggers for systemd (229-4ubuntu21.1) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.59ubuntu1) ...
nigel@plex-media-server:~

The installation process will invoke Plex so stop the service

nigel@plex-media-server:~$ sudo service plexmediaserver stop

Copy to Destination Machine

We now need to copy Plex from the source to the destination machine. The best method is to scp the entire Plex file structure from one machine to the other. The file structure is at /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/ and is owned by the user plex as you can see here:

nigel@nigel-Aspire-VN7-793G:/$ ls -las /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/
total 44                                                                                                        
4 drwxr-xr-x 10 plex plex 4096 Feb 24 09:51 .                                                                   
4 drwxr-xr-x  3 plex plex 4096 Jan 28 20:11 ..                                                                  
4 drwxr-xr-x  5 plex plex 4096 Feb 24 09:45 Cache                                                               
4 drwxr-xr-x  3 plex plex 4096 Jan 28 20:11 Codecs                                                              
4 drwxr-xr-x  3 plex plex 4096 Jan 28 20:11 Crash Reports                                                       
4 drwxr-xr-x  3 plex plex 4096 Feb 24 09:14 Logs                                                                
4 drwxr-xr-x  3 plex plex 4096 Jan 28 20:18 Media                                                               
4 drwxr-xr-x  6 plex plex 4096 Jan 30 21:44 Metadata                                                            
4 drwxr-xr-x  3 plex plex 4096 Feb 22 20:25 Plug-ins                                                            
4 drwxr-xr-x  7 plex plex 4096 Jan 28 20:11 Plug-in Support                                                     
4 -rw-------  1 plex plex 1002 Feb 24 09:45 Preferences.xml
nigel@nigel-Aspire-VN7-793G:/$

So to get all the permissions and ownerships correct during the copy we should assign a password to the user plex so when we scp we can provide the prompted for password.

root@plex-media-server:/home/nigel# passwd plex 
Enter new UNIX password: 
Retype new UNIX password: 
passwd: password updated successfully
root@plex-media-server:/home/nigel#

Ok - so if we switch back to the source machine we need to execute the scp command like this:

nigel@nigel-Aspire-VN7-793G:/$ sudo -H -u plex scp -rp  /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/* plex@192.168.0.203:"/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\\ Support/Plex\\ Media\\ Server/."

Note that I am running the scp as the plex user on my source machine through the superuser, and also note the double back-whacks and quotes on the destination directory structure.

Next we should start the Plex service on the destination machine and check it came up ok.

nigel@plex-media-server:~$ sudo service plexmediaserver start
nigel@plex-media-server:~$ ps -ef | grep plex
plex     17501     1  0 13:19 ?        00:00:00 /bin/sh -c LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/plexmediaserver "/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server"
plex     17502 17501 22 13:19 ?        00:00:02 /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server
plex     17517 17502 89 13:19 ?        00:00:07 Plex Plug-in [com.plexapp.system] /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Resources/Plug-ins-c40bba82e/Framework.bundle/Contents/Resources/Versions/2/Python/bootstrap.py --server-version 1.11.3.4803-c40bba82e /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Resources/Plug-ins-c40bba82e/System.bundle
nigel    17541  1453  0 13:19 pts/0    00:00:00 grep --color=auto plex
nigel@plex-media-server:~$

Web Browser Destination Access

You should now be able to point your browser to Plex's new home. You need to change the URL to include your IP address, which in my case is 192.168.0.203 with a port of 32400. Yours should be similar but probably not identical. Check out the first image above for the entire URL although you won't need to include the index.html.

You may have to log in again but mine went straight to the 'Recently Added' view as you can see in the second image above. So my media and my libraries have been found ok. This shouldn't be a surprise - don't forget earlier in the tutorial I connected the VM to my FreeNAS where the media is held - and the canonical path is exactly the same to the media on the VM (destination) as it is on my source machine (my laptop).

Empty trash automatically

Now we know everything is working ok, we should re-enable the emptying of trash - see the screenshot above.

Tidying up

A little housekeeping is required. We now have two systems using the same BadzillaPlex name - so let's remove it from my laptop. To do that issue:

$ sudo dpkg --remove plexmediaserver
[sudo] password for nigel: 
(Reading database ... 334962 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing plexmediaserver (1.10.1.4602-f54242b6b) ...
Removed symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/plexmediaserver.service.
Processing triggers for systemd (229-4ubuntu21.1) ...
Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-19) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.22-1ubuntu5.1) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.59ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.23-0ubuntu10) ...

blog terms

Hardware Linux VirtualBox Plex

Review of TP-LINK TL-SG1024D 24-Port Gigabit Desktop/Rackmount Unmanaged Switch

nigel — Sun, 11 Feb 2018 16:53:21 +0000

Review of TP-LINK TL-SG1024D 24-Port Gigabit Desktop/Rackmount Unmanaged Switch nigel Sun, 11/02/2018 - 16:53

Rating

I was idly sat watching TV and I did a quick reckon up - I have eight devices on my TV stand capable of being Internet connected (i.e. possessing RJ45 ethernet sockets). Only three were ever connected at any one time, and frequently I would have to dive into the dusty area behind the stand, and risking accidentally pulling out other cables, to try to find the slot of a device I wanted to connect. The reason three was my limit was because I was using a Powerline internet extender which came with three ports. The Powerline uses my mains electricity to extend my Wireless from my router which is placed in the main bedroom since for historic reasons that's where the BT phone socket is.

I realised it was time to get a switch with adequate capacity for future devices, and I opted for the 24 port TP-Link TL-SG1024D Gigabit. My concern was the Powerline, which would be the input of an ethernet signal to the port, may not play ball with the TP-Link switch. My fears were totally unfounded and I was able to connect up all my devices but of course I needed CAT5e specification cables to utilise Gigabit speeds. This is of course unnecessary between WiFi and cabled devices since WiFi isn't that quick, but it's good for devices that are cabled.

The TP-Link box is a good compact size, and comes with tiny LED lights on the left that gives an indication of transfer per port although the LEDs are seriously small and not particularly bright. The box comes with brackets to enable it to be fitted to a 17" rack which means that it could have commercial as well as residential installations. So far I've had no problems at all with it, and it was the cheapest 24 port switch on Amazon when I did a price comparison.

Bill of Materials

TP-LINK TL-SG1024D	24-Port Gigabit Desktop/Rackmount Unmanaged Switch	Amazon.co.uk	£67.85
Cat5e Cable	RED Cat5e Ethernet RJ45 High Speed Network Cable Lead 5m	Amazon.co.uk	£2.99
	TOTAL		£70.84

Connections

The connections are denoted on the picture above. Most of it is self-explanatory. The Blu-ray connection is useful since it also has the ability to provide online services and movies on demand. I have an unusual combination of a Freesat and a Sky box - preparation for the day when I elect not to subscribe to Sky anymore. The Android TV and Raspberry Pi labels are mixed up on the diagram. Android TV provides Kodi along with a Plex media client which can connect to my Plex Media Server. The raspberry Pi is running a Squid Proxy server which is configured to block ads. The Intel NUC was subject to an earlier blog here.

blog terms

Hardware Plex