Openmediavault + Plex Media Server as Home Media Server

Server Introduction

OpenMediaVault (OMV) is a Debian based headless Operating System (OS). I have been using this for a while now. More I use this OS more I fall in love with. Reason for this is mainly because of its beautiful web based management system, plugin system (DLNA,CUPS, Tranmission) and  its based OS.

Image 1.1 – OpenMediaVault (OVM) Web Interface

Openmediavault is very lite weight operating system (download here).  It has straight forward installation method. I think the only problem with installation is that it takes whole hard drive (HD) for OS installation which mean you cannot use that HD for file storage purpose. Similarly, you cannot customise the space that you would like to give to OS unlike other operating system.( So Be Carefully before you install this OS make a backup!)

There is work around for this problem either you can (1) install OS in fast pendrive or (2) you can shrink you partition after you install the OS. I prefer second option and its much safer than pendrive as anyone can unplug pendrive and whole system will stop working. I am not going to explain how to install the OS in detail.

1. For installing OS in pendrive, insert your pendrive then run the installation. It will give you option later on to install in it.

2. For installing OS in hardrive  - follow in screen setup and install everything then you need a live OS to shrink partition. I prefer Partedmagic (download). Just boot in to live OS and use Partition Editor (its a Gparted application) to shrink to the size partition to size that you want to give to os (I would prefer 20GB so that you can play around with os later). (maybe I will explain this in detail near future?)

After installation of OS you will get a ip for you server (it will show your ip on your monitor). Just go to other computer at home and type that ip in your chosen browser (I prefer chrome but its up to you). It will now show you the login box. For the first time your login detail will be

User Name:	admin
Password:	openmediavault

To change the password, after you login you can do this

System -> General Settings ->Web Administrator password

Next thing we need to do is to enable ssh service. We need this to run different terminal command in server. Not everything can be done from web management system.

Go to Services -> SSH -> Enable (tick) ->OK

Again you need to download SSH client, if you are using Linux or Mac OS its build in system but for Windows system you need to download SSH client. My favorite SSH client for windows is putty (download). Putty is very user friend application. One does not need to spend more than 10 min to connect to SSH server.

Image 1.2 – Putty

We will be using SSH to run different command remotely in server.

End of Server Pre-Setup

Plex Media Server Introduction

After this, we will install Plex Media Server (PMS) in server. Plex Media Server (PMS) is a server application which auto manage the media content and serves it to different platform. You can find its client apps in Windows & Mac OS as well as in mobile platform (iOS, Android) plus it can also be install in Apple TV, its build in Google TV, LG Connected Devices, Roku.

Image 2.1 – Plex Media Server (PMS) Web Manager

Installing PMS in OpenMediaVault (OMV)

1. First thing we should know is that OMV is not ground up build system. It is based on Debian System. So anything that runs in debian will run in OMV. Plex Media Server (PMS) does run in debian system but not in direct way. PMS has .deb installation file which are base on Ubuntu OS (which like OMV is base on debian too). Lets start the installation, first you need to add repo (its a web link where file are kept) in source.list file in OMV.

Connect to SSH and run following command in order.

apt-get install aptitude

aptitude update

aptitude install curl

Add this line deb http://shell.ninthgate.se/packages/debian squeeze main in /etc/apt/source.list.d/plexmediaserver.list

nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plexmediaserver.list

curl http://shell.ninthgate.se/packages/shell-ninthgate-se-keyring.key | sudo apt-key add -

aptitude update

aptitude install plexmediaserver

These command will add repo “deb http://shell.ninthgate.se/packages/debian squeeze main” to /etc/apt/source.list and keys to login to web. If everything went well without the error then plexmediaserver should be install.

Now check if plexmediaserver is running or not

/etc/init.d/plexmediaserver status

if it says “Plex Media Server process running” then PMS is running. If it gave error like file not found or “Plex Media Server process not running” then it might be due to two possible reason. Either the installation didn’t add user plex or there is no file called plexmediaserver in /etc/init.d/

Either way the solution I found will work. We need to run PMS as root user. Follow the steps below

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/plexmediaserver

Now we need to check if there is plexmediaserver file in /etc/init.d/ or not

nano /etc/init.d/plexmediaserver

If this gives you empty editor then copy following code.

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: plexmediaserver
# Required-Start: $remote_fs $syslog $all
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: Plex Media Server
# Description: Plex Media Server for Linux,
# More information at http://www.plexapp.com
# Many thanks to the great PlexApp team for his wonderfull job !
# Author: Cedric Quillevere / origin@killy.net
# Version: 1.0
### END INIT INFO

#test -f “/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server” || exit 0
test -f “/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/start.sh” || exit 0

export PMS_RUN_USER=”root“

plex_running=`ps ax | grep “\./Plex Media Server” | awk ‘{ print $1 }’ | wc -l`

case “$1″ in
start)
if [ "$plex_running" -gt 1 ]; then
echo “Plex already running…”
exit 0
fi
echo -n “Starting Plex Media Server: “
su -l $PMS_RUN_USER -c “/usr/sbin/start_pms &” >/dev/null 2>&1
sleep 1
echo “done”
;;
stop)
if [ "$plex_running" -eq 1 ]; then
echo “Plex Media Server is not running (no process found)…”
exit 0
fi
echo -n “Killing Plex Media Server: “
# Trying to kill the Plex Media Server itself but also the Plug-ins
ps ax | grep “Plex Media Server” | awk ‘{ print $1 }’ | xargs kill -9 >/dev/null 2>&1
ps ax | grep “Plex DLNA Server” | awk ‘{ print $1 }’ | xargs kill -9 >/dev/null 2>&1
sleep 1
echo “done”
;;
restart)
sh $0 stop
sh $0 start
;;
status)
if [ "$plex_running" -gt 1 ]; then
echo “Plex Media Server process running.”
else
echo “It seems that Plex Media Server isn’t running (no process found).”
fi
;;
*)
echo “Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart|status}”
exit 1
;;
esac

exit 0

Otherwise if it looks like this, just change plex to root at line 17.

Now, we need to change plex to root in /etc/default/plexmediaserver files

nano /etc/default/plexmediaserver

At line 19 change plex to root again.

Now run

chmod 777 /etc/init.d/plexmediaserver

/etc/init.d/plexmediaserver restart

Check if plex is running or not

/etc/init.d/plexmediaserver status

If it says “Plex Media Server process running.”

Now goto your client computer (i.e laptop / tab) and goto browser and type

[your server ip]:32400/web

It will show you the Plex’s web management system where you can add/remove contain.

Note: Using root user to run any application is not recommended, specially if you are concern about security. And If you use root to run PMS, every time you update PMS you need to go back to /etc/init.d/plexmediaserver, delete it and rename plexmediaserve.dpkg to plexmediaserver and restart demon.

End of Plex Media Server Installation

Optional for OMV- Moving PMS Library

If you are like me who have small partition for you OS then you might need to think of moving Plex Media Server Application Library to different partition.

The easiest solution that I found is to make symbolic link of your Library folder.

First copy all the files from your library to other partition. (I am running PMS as root if you are using any other user then you need to change root to that user name)

cp -avr /root/Library /media/[partition name]/Library

Just in Case make a backup

mv /root/Library  /root/Library.bak

Now Symbolic link your Library folder

ln -s /media/[partition name]/Library /root/Library

End of Optional for OMV- Moving PMS Library

1. Reference:http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/32852-plex-media-server-debian-repository/

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