Plex Media Server Installation Help
I just installed Bazzite after trying a couple distros and it seems to run best on my hardware, but I have hit a snag, I cannot seem to install plex media server because dnf is not installed. So I did a search and found that for Bazzite, because it is not editable, I should try to run from a container.
I don't appear to be able to install docker, so I tried podman, but I don't seem to have the ability to run compose.... now, just to be clear I am not an expert at containers yet, but that seems to be an issue stopping me. I was gonna try distrobox, but I cannot run the plex image that way (that I can figure out) and it doesn't seem to let me mount drives directly anyways (again the documentation for distrobox is nowhere near as good as Docker, so I could be missing something. I made myself a podman compose file, but I need to figure out how to actually use it. I would really appreciate some guidance here.
I don't appear to be able to install docker, so I tried podman, but I don't seem to have the ability to run compose.... now, just to be clear I am not an expert at containers yet, but that seems to be an issue stopping me. I was gonna try distrobox, but I cannot run the plex image that way (that I can figure out) and it doesn't seem to let me mount drives directly anyways (again the documentation for distrobox is nowhere near as good as Docker, so I could be missing something. I made myself a podman compose file, but I need to figure out how to actually use it. I would really appreciate some guidance here.
30 Replies
If you can't make container plex work, you can layer packages
sudo dnf install package -> rpm-ostree install package
Reboot when it completes
so that installs it directly on the host system?
Yep
Are there downsides?
like, will I have issues when I update or something?
Updates take slightly longer, and you open yourself up to dependency issues like you can get with normal DNF, but we'll help you if you do
ok, cool, let me try that and if it works I will mark this resolved
I am using the offical RPM and getting a message that it requires systemd
Odd, systemd is definitely in use
yea
Let me try when I get a few, see what's up
The distrobox route worked for me, but it was a mission to get it to work
Make the distrobox, you need the "--init" and "--additional-packages "systemd libpam-systemd" part to allow the plexmediaserver.service systemd service to run
Download plex .deb file (AMD 64-bit edition)
Everything from here downwards is running in the distrobox
We going to change plex to run as your user
Add to start of file, after the commented out lines and replace "your-user-name-goes-here" with your actual username
Restart the plex media server
Use plex as normal http://localhost:32400/web/index.html and you can access any file that your user has access to
So no mounting required to access my other drives in the box?
The mounted drives works just fine as long as the mounted drive is accessible by your user
ok this seems to work, is there a way to get remote access working? does distrobox have port forwarding?
Remote access from outside your network or your local lan? Local lan worked for me out the box.
outside network, i use plex for audiobooks and music, I like to be able to acccess them when im not home.
I just used the tailscale client. It's built into Bazzite
sorry I have so many questions, the distrobox documentation doesnt appear very robust yet.
and can access from a remote network
at some point, I should learn to actually use containers, its still very confusing.
No problem. I'm actually planning on making a video for installing plex with distrobox as there is very little info on it
If you happy with the above solution, could you please mark it as solved. For anyone else needing plex help
ok, so I have been keeping info from you... I was using a previous install "Plex Media Server" folder. once I removed "manual public port" and hit apply remote access started working, not sure why, but it did
could be a firewall thing, Bazzite blocks everything below 1025 unless you open it
All my media is scanning now and I can access outside.. I think im good. Does distrobox use the ~/.local/share/containers/storage folder for its files?
Yup so you don't want to remove those
yea, I might even try to back them up
Cool. 🙂 shout if you get stuck with anything else
will do
I need help setting this up to, i wanted to make the whole prowlarr/sonarr etc setup
if you are familiar with docker compose you can just use podlet to convert your file to podman quadlet
I've run that command and rebooted, now how do I run Plex server? Is it already running?
I don't think I see it on ps -e
This one worked