[HOWTO] Install Plex Media Server on Finch / Qjail-3.5

[dreamcat4]

Description:

Plex Media Server is a home multimedia server with web interface. With a number of unique features, Plex has continued to increase in popularity over last few years. It is now the number 1 program of it's kind. It can stream media to Smart TVs, Consoles, Smartphones and other computers.

https://plex.tv/

HOW-TO Link:

https://gist.github.com/dreamcat4/f19580cbd31d8f628aca

Most of the commands can be copy-pasted and should "just work". However if you wish, it is possible to change some variables near the top. For example "jail_ip=", "jail_loopback=" and "jailname=".

[dreamcat4]

Hi I installed Finch and it worked. I have one question, do I have to do the steps under "FreeBSD-GENERIC"

-$ "pw user mod $USER -G wheel"
-$ "pw user mod $USER -s /usr/local/bin/bash"
-$ ". /etc/profile" will re-source profile for this shell

I didnt do these or I tryed but it didnt work.

That is for people on the official FreeBSD distribution. NAS4Free people don't need to do that. You are contacting me on NAS4Free Forums.

After this i installed plex, Its now poosible to login on the web gui. But my issue is the mounting of the file system.

This is my setup:

NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
No1 810G 4.54T 409M /mnt/No1
No1/Movies 698G 4.54T 698G /mnt/No1/Movies
No1/Music 67.2G 4.54T 67.2G /mnt/No1/Music
No1/Other 26.7G 4.54T 26.7G /mnt/No1/Other
No1/Photos 18.3G 4.54T 18.3G /mnt/No1/Photos

Finch is mounted at
/mnt/Data/Finch/

And plex is in a jail inside Finch

plz help me sort this mounting out trying to se the logic in "http://dreamcat4.github.io/finch/mounting-filesystems/" but trial and error seems the wrong way to go.

OK. This step is optional. If you wish to have your Media in it's own dataset.

* Do not move /mnt/No1 since that is your pool.

* For you, I strongly recommend having only 1 "Media" dataset, with 3 sub-folders for the "Movies" "Music" and "Photos" inside it. That way, it is less hassle mounting 1 folder instead of 3 of them.

* You have to move the "Media" dataset mountpoint to be inside of the Finch location. With "zfs set mountpoint=<new location> <dataset_name>. If you do it wrong it does not matter. Just check the result with zfs list and move it again if it was wrong.

* From experience, I know it is not always easy to predict the result of this command. Because the zfs 'altroot' parameter is also prefixed and interferes with the result.

* After your zfs dataset is in the new location, then can nullfs-mount it back to the original location Where it was previously. You can use either finch's own fstab file OR nas4free's web GUI disks menu for that task.

* Add the new /mnt/No1/Media folder to the plex jail's fstab file. Which is @ /usr/local/etc/qjail.fstab/<jailname>. That is all done inside of Finch's chroot directory.

Sorry it's a a bit of a hassle. However I don't know of a better way by myself. If you come up with other kinds of solutions then please share them here with the community.

According to "https://gist.github.com/dreamcat4/f19580cbd31d8f628aca" there chall be a setup file "UMS.conf". But it is nowhere to be seen i guess its no problem if the mountying points is set up correctly couse the plex gui seems to handle this.
//Tim

Ah sorry. There was something which shouldn't be there because it was copied / pasted from other HowTo page. "UMS.conf" is definately not required for Plex. I have now removed that incorrect bit from the PLEX HowTo. It was not needed.

All configuration is done directly in Plex's web interface you can access in a web browser from "http://${jail_ip}:32400/web".

However If you need to manually install plugins, or look at the Plex Files. Then the location is "/usr/local/plex" folder. Inside of your plex jail.

Many thanks.

[Mizma]

Thaks for the quick response
Today status is as follow:

After created a new folder No1/Media and added som files in the folder I made the following commad

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zfs set mountpoint=/mnt/Data/Finch/mnt/No1/Media No1/Media

Nas4free ZFS dataset information and status after zfs set mountpoint:

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NAME         USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
No1          811G  4.53T  1.08G  /mnt/No1
No1/Media   40.0K  4.53T  40.0K  /mnt/Data/Finch/mnt/No1/Media
No1/Movies   698G  4.53T   698G  /mnt/No1/Movies
No1/Music   67.2G  4.53T  67.2G  /mnt/No1/Music
No1/Other   26.7G  4.53T  26.7G  /mnt/No1/Other
No1/Photos  18.3G  4.53T  18.3G  /mnt/No1/Photos

After this I created a folder stucture under the jail plex in my case even that named the same way "/mnt/No1/Media". Then I continued and modified the fstab by adding this line:

/usr/jails/sharedfs /usr/jails/plex/sharedfs nullfs ro 0 0 -- This line was already present in the file shall it be removed?
/mnt/No1/Media /usr/jails/plex/mnt/No1/Media nullfs ro 0 0

Then I started the jail and did the "df" command with this output:

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Filesystem                   1K-blocks      Used      Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ufsid/512e4ea8d32df51a   11878940    352868   10575760     3%    /
devfs                                1         1          0   100%    /dev
procfs                               4         4          0   100%    /proc
/dev/ufsid/512e4ea83d2dbf64   44861980   8894984   32378040    22%    /mnt/Data
No1                         4870536327   1133530 4869402797     0%    /mnt/No1
No1/Movies                  5600868942 731466145 4869402797    13%    /mnt/No1/Movies
No1/Music                   4939847587  70444790 4869402797     1%    /mnt/No1/Music
No1/Other                   4897392057  27989260 4869402797     1%    /mnt/No1/Other
No1/Photos                  4888595009  19192212 4869402797     0%    /mnt/No1/Photos
devfs                                1         1          0   100%    /mnt/Data/Finch/dev
/usr/jails/sharedfs           44861980   8894984   32378040    22%    /mnt/Data/Finch/usr/jails/plex/sharedfs
/mnt/No1/Media                44861980   8894984   32378040    22%    /mnt/Data/Finch/usr/jails/plex/mnt/No1/Media
devfs                                1         1          0   100%    /mnt/Data/Finch/usr/jails/plex/dev

There is somewhere I have missed couse the map structure is now seen in plex (web gui) but there is no files in the Media folder (I've put som pictures and some movies just to be sure). Then there is another strage file structure under the Finch chroot environment. The file structure under /mnt/ contanis my No1/Media but even a recursive lope /mnt/Data/Finch@ shall this be here or how do i remove it?

[dreamcat4]

In first listing, the "No1/Media" dataset seems to exist. BUT it is only "40.0K" (kilobytes) large. That seems odd. Did you do "zfs create" to create the new "Media: dataset ? It does not seem right.

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NAME         USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
No1          811G  4.53T  1.08G  /mnt/No1
No1/Media   40.0K  4.53T  40.0K  /mnt/Data/Finch/mnt/No1/Media <-------------
No1/Movies   698G  4.53T   698G  /mnt/No1/Movies
No1/Music   67.2G  4.53T  67.2G  /mnt/No1/Music
No1/Other   26.7G  4.53T  26.7G  /mnt/No1/Other
No1/Photos  18.3G  4.53T  18.3G  /mnt/No1/Photos

After this I created a folder stucture under the jail plex in my case even that named the same way "/mnt/No1/Media". Then I continued and modified the fstab by adding this line:

/usr/jails/sharedfs /usr/jails/plex/sharedfs nullfs ro 0 0 -- This line was already present in the file shall it be removed?
/mnt/No1/Media /usr/jails/plex/mnt/No1/Media nullfs ro 0 0

What you did was correct. However it would be very bad idea to remove the 'sharedfs' folder. I'm not sure why you are even suggesting that.

Then I started the jail and did the "df" command with this output:

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Filesystem                   1K-blocks      Used      Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ufsid/512e4ea8d32df51a   11878940    352868   10575760     3%    /
devfs                                1         1          0   100%    /dev
procfs                               4         4          0   100%    /proc
/dev/ufsid/512e4ea83d2dbf64   44861980   8894984   32378040    22%    /mnt/Data
No1                         4870536327   1133530 4869402797     0%    /mnt/No1
No1/Movies                  5600868942 731466145 4869402797    13%    /mnt/No1/Movies
No1/Music                   4939847587  70444790 4869402797     1%    /mnt/No1/Music
No1/Other                   4897392057  27989260 4869402797     1%    /mnt/No1/Other
No1/Photos                  4888595009  19192212 4869402797     0%    /mnt/No1/Photos
devfs                                1         1          0   100%    /mnt/Data/Finch/dev
/usr/jails/sharedfs           44861980   8894984   32378040    22%    /mnt/Data/Finch/usr/jails/plex/sharedfs
/mnt/No1/Media                44861980   8894984   32378040    22%    /mnt/Data/Finch/usr/jails/plex/mnt/No1/Media
devfs                                1         1          0   100%    /mnt/Data/Finch/usr/jails/plex/dev

There is no "No1/Media" dataset listed there. The entry you see is the nullfs mapping. So according to this 2nd listing you have pasted here, the dataset in question does not exist anymore. Perhaps you deleted it, or was bad to begin with (40KB size seems wrong).

/mnt/ contanis my No1/Media but even a recursive lope /mnt/Data/Finch@ shall this be here or how do i remove it?

Don't worry about "/mnt/Data/Finch@". It is just a symlink and is supposed to be there.
Try again.

[Mizma]

Thanks
The problem was as you expected i missed to do the "zfs create". After removing the data set and making a new on from shh.

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zfs create No1/Media

then again:

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zfs set mountpoint=/mnt/Data/Finch/mnt/No1/Media No1/Media

It started working.

But somthing is still creazy couse after I removed and created the No1/Media it was empty and I had no acces to the folder from windows. Then i moved a new movie file through nas4free web. This file was then accessable from Plex and playable. But now in windows the old files is back inte the same folder them as well playable. So somthing went wrong se below.

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Welcome to NAS4Free!
nas4free ~/ root~$ cd /mnt/No1/Media
nas4free Media/ root~$ ls
./
../
DuckTales - 0101 - [1 av 1] - Dont give up the ship.mpg*
nas4free Media/ root~$  sudo finch chroot
finch: chrooting to "/mnt/Data/Finch".
nas4free // root^> cd /mnt/No1/Media
nas4free Media/ root^> ls
./
../
Hachiko.A.Dog's.Story.2009.BluRay.720p.DTS.x264-Cosumez.mkv

[Mizma]

ZFS list from root

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ZFS dataset information and status

NAME         USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
No1          815G  4.53T   801M  /mnt/No1
No1/Media   4.36G  4.53T  4.36G  /mnt/Data/Finch/mnt/No1/Media
No1/Movies   698G  4.53T   698G  /mnt/No1/Movies
No1/Music   67.2G  4.53T  67.2G  /mnt/No1/Music
No1/Other   26.7G  4.53T  26.7G  /mnt/No1/Other
No1/Photos  18.3G  4.53T  18.3G  /mnt/No1/Photos

DF from Flinch

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Filesystem                   512-blocks       Used      Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ufsid/512e4ea8d32df51a    23757880     706120   21151136     3%    /
devfs                                 2          2          0   100%    /dev
procfs                                8          8          0   100%    /proc
/dev/ufsid/512e4ea83d2dbf64    89723960   17799808   64746240    22%    /mnt/Data
No1                          9731919482    1641233 9730278249     0%    /mnt/No1
No1/Movies                  11193210539 1462932290 9730278249    13%    /mnt/No1/Movies
No1/Music                    9871167827  140889578 9730278249     1%    /mnt/No1/Music
No1/Other                    9786256769   55978520 9730278249     1%    /mnt/No1/Other
No1/Photos                   9768662673   38384424 9730278249     0%    /mnt/No1/Photos
devfs                                 2          2          0   100%    /mnt/Data/Finch/dev
No1/Media                    9739431504    9153255 9730278249     0%    /mnt/Data/Finch/mnt/No1/Media
/usr/jails/sharedfs            89723960   17799808   64746240    22%    /mnt/Data/Finch/usr/jails/plex/sharedfs
/mnt/No1/Media               9739431504    9153255 9730278249     0%    /mnt/Data/Finch/usr/jails/plex/mnt/No1/Media
devfs                                 2          2          0   100%    /mnt/Data/Finch/usr/jails/plex/dev

[dreamcat4]

Nah. Looks fine to me. The dataset just isn't mapped yet onto the NAS4Free host. You can either:


A) Edit the "/etc/fstab" file in finch's chroot, and add some line like this:

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# Finch - FreeBSD in a chroot! - dreamcat4@gmail.com (C 2014). FreeBSD License.
# 
# fstab:
# 
#   Entries in this file will be mounted before `finch start` and unmounted after
#   `finch stop`.  Mounts can be from and disks or folders available on the host 
#   system (toplevel global scope).
# 
/mnt/Data/Finch/mnt/No1/Media /mnt/No1/Media nullfs rw 0 0

Then restart finch.

OR

B) Doing the same thing, but using NAS4Free WEB GUI instead. With the Nas4Free "Disk Management" screens.

Remove the Ducktales file first. Since that will become hidden.

[Mizma]

That was neet trick .
Now my plex have on folder to play with. what do you sugest moving Movie, picture and musik folder to Media folder? or is it at better way to do it?

How do you set permissions on the Media foldernow I have to have Unix user\root to change it.

this is what it look like now

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nas4free No1/ root~$  ls -l
total 120
drwxrwxrwx    9 1003  admin    9 Aug  2 12:05 ./
drwxr-xr-x    4 root  wheel  512 Aug  2 17:54 ../
drwxr-xr-x    3 root  wheel    4 Aug  2 18:29 Media/
drwxrwxrwx    4 root  wheel    4 Aug  1 08:36 Movies/
drwxrwxrwx  465 root  wheel  466 Mar  1  2013 Music/
drwxrwxrwx   33 root  wheel   69 Aug  2 19:08 Photos/

changed manualy permission with

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chmod -R 777 Media/

[dreamcat4]

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mkdir -p Media/Movies
mkdir -p Media/Music
etc...

Moves files over into the new subdirectories. Then delete the previous Movies, Music, dataset as no longer needed.

For setting unix permissions, use "chown -R user:group" command. And "chmod -R g+w" to make a folder group-writable. The user owner and group owner of your media depends entirely on your CIFS/SAMBA user, it's UID/GID. And also your 'plex' account's UID/GID number. If you want to make plex jail mount it readonly then it's easier, just make everything owned by the SAMBA account. However then Plex does not have permission to delete watched media files. Adding "plex" user user to "samba Group's" GID (and giving the SAMBA group members write permission to the Media folder with "chmod -R g+w" will allow plex write access ONLY IF the qjail.fstab/plex fstab file is also mounted as 'rw'.

Anyway. It is not my place to dictate to others what should be their own personal choices for file / permissions or group ownerships. It depends on and individual basis how you want to set up your files. Which is nothing to do with Plex. These are all standard unix commands. "man chmod", "man chown", "man mount".

[Mizma]

lol always some shit. Tryed to download a torrent with the inbuilt bittorrent server, turns out it has died and won't start any more. I tried to start it from the gui and then tried to do some changes the outcome is that I get this fine response.

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The changes could not be applied (error code 1)

Fun to start trying backtrace what went wrong along the way, on the good side is that Plex works like a charm.

[dreamcat4]

lol always some shit. Tryed to download a torrent with the inbuilt bittorrent server, turns out it has died and won't start any more. I tried to start it from the gui and then tried to do some changes the outcome is that I get this fine response.

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The changes could not be applied (error code 1)

Fun to start trying backtrace what went wrong along the way, on the good side is that Plex works like a charm.

Well, isn't the buld-in torrent client 'transmisison' ? That may run as it's own 'transmission' user account. Check the files '/etc/passwd' and '/etc/group'. Then add the transmission user to your samba group with "pw group add help", followed by "pw group add <samba_group> -M transmission". Where <samba_group> is actually the username/group name of your SAMBA account's UNIX user. That is some setting you already choosesd in SAMBA configuration menu of NAS4Free webGUI and I cannot know it.

[Mizma]

Solution for

Error: The changes could not be applied (error code 1).

problem viewtopic.php?f=47&t=5913&p=40856#p40856

[zaibas]

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sudo finch chroot
sudo: unable to stat /usr/local/etc/sudoers: No error: 0
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting
sudo: unable to initialize policy plugin

i get this when i try to enter the finch chroot, did i do something wrong somewhere? how can i fix this?

[dreamcat4]

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sudo finch chroot
sudo: unable to stat /usr/local/etc/sudoers: No error: 0
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting
sudo: unable to initialize policy plugin

i get this when i try to enter the finch chroot, did i do something wrong somewhere? how can i fix this?

I'm experiencing issues when attempting to enter the finch chroot environment, as root

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backup-server ~/ root~$ sudo finch chroot
sudo: unable to stat /usr/local/etc/sudoers: No error: 0
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting
sudo: unable to initialize policy plugin

We have now idenditifed this problem. It occurs if any of the following folders are not readable because of incorrect user ownsership OR unix permissions for any of these paths leading up to the sudoers file:

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sudoers symlink:
/
/usr/
/usr/local/
/usr/local/etc/
/usr/local/etc/sudoers

actual sudoers file:
/
/path/
/path/to/
/path/to/finch/
/path/to/finch/usr/
/path/to/finch/usr/local/
/path/to/finch/usr/local/etc/
/path/to/finch/usr/local/etc/sudoers

Usually the reason is because the disk's mount point owner was not set to user "root" and group "wheel". And / or the chmod permissions "read" and "execute" are not checked for "owner" and "group" fields in nas4free GUI in the disk mount point / disk management pages. Click spanner icon to edit.

Other reason is any intermediate folders are not readable for sudo to be able to scanning these folders, and cd'ing into the right subfolder to read the sudoers config file. So is worth to check permissions on each subfolders manually with 'ls -lsa' command. If ordinary folder (not mountpoint) then use "chown" or "chmod" commands to correct the permissions and ownership to be root:wheel 0755.

[nadigo]

hi

i am trying to mount a sharedfs to my jails. I fail to understand what is wrong
i have the rigth zfs mount, just inside finch sharedfs but my jails are not seeing it

any idea why ?

nadav

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df

Filesystem                   1K-blocks     Used      Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ufsid/5483139d59447d1e    2030524   306624    1561460    16%    /
devfs                                1        1          0   100%    /dev
procfs                               4        4          0   100%    /proc
pool1                       5682655057  3742986 5678912070     0%    /mnt/pool1
pool1/media                 5728534286 49622216 5678912070     1%    /mnt/pool1/finch/usr/jails/sharedfs/media
devfs                                1        1          0   100%    /mnt/pool1/finch/dev
/usr/jails/sharedfs         5682655057  3742986 5678912070     0%    /mnt/pool1/finch/usr/jails/nodjs/sharedfs
devfs                                1        1          0   100%    /mnt/pool1/finch/usr/jails/nodjs/dev
/usr/jails/sharedfs         5682655057  3742986 5678912070     0%    /mnt/pool1/finch/usr/jails/plex/sharedfs
devfs                                1        1          0   100%    /mnt/pool1/finch/usr/jails/plex/dev

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$ zfs list
NAME          USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
pool1        50.9G  5.29T  3.57G  /mnt/pool1
pool1/media  47.3G  5.29T  47.3G  /mnt/pool1/finch/usr/jails/sharedfs/media

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Welcome to your FreeBSD jail.
plex ~/ root~#   
plex ~/ root~# ls /sharedfs/
bin/     lib/     libexec/ media/   sbin/    sys      usr/     
plex ~/ root~# ls /sharedfs/media/
./  ../

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nano /mnt/pool1/finch/usr/local/etc/qjail.fstab/flex 

/usr/jails/sharedfs /usr/jails/nodjs/sharedfs nullfs ro 0 0

[dreamcat4]

[quote="nadigo"][/quote]

Well you have not done anything wrong here. Unfortunately it seems that in FreeBSD nullfs mounts do not work across filesystem boundaries. That seems to be the only reason for this happening. Cannot solve these kinds of issue, they are out of my hands. However I have updated the relevent part of the finch documentation as of today. Many thanks for reporting this.

You will need to mount the dataset in each jail that requires access to it. But before doing that you can use the zfs set mountpoint cmd to move the dataset's mountpoint back outside of sharedfs folder where it didn't work. I would suggest that you move it to /mnt/pool1/finch/mnt/pool1/media. Then add a nullfs line into each jails fstab file (copying the example of the default sharedfs line, just changing the src / target locations, and ro --> rw if needed).