Media Home Server¶

Plex Server: 192.168.50.11:32400/web

Transmission Server: http://192.168.50.11:9091

The plan is to have a Netflix-like local server that runs on a Raspberry pi.

My hardware setup is:

Raspberry Pi 4
SSD Sata Drive
Sata Drive adaptor with external power source (very important to have external power source. It took me a lot of formatting to find out that the pi is not powerful enough to hold an external hard-drive).

The software setup is:

Transmission: to handle anything I want to download on my pi. It has a nice web ui that I can use form my personal laptop.
Plex: this is our media server. It will stream everything that it finds on the external SSD hard-drive.

Setup Pi4¶

Manually download OS image from here
Flash micro SD card with OS image. I'm using balena etcher
Make sure to add ssh empty file to micro SD card after OS image is flashed. This allows headless connections.
Connect Pi4 to router with ethernet cable. Power it on. Check router for IP address in order to connect.

Note: If need to change ssh key: ssh-keygen -R 192.168.0.11

Install updates¶

Always good to keep all up to date:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
sudo apt autoremove -y

Install Vim¶

I use vim:

sudo apt-get install vim -y

Setup Static IP¶

Need to have a static IP in case the PI or router needs to restart:

sudo vim /etc/dhcpcd.conf

And enter the following at the end of the file:

#setting static ip address for raspberry pi 4
static ip_address=192.168.50.11/24
static routers=192.168.50.1
static domain_name_servers=192.168.50.1

Reboot PI:

sudo reboot

Setup External Hard-Drive¶

Format drive:

lsblk -f
sudo umount /dev/sda2
sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/sda2

Install ntfs package:

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

Install Exfat Package:

sudo apt-get install exfat-utils exfat-fuse

Create storage directory:

sudo mkdir -p /Media

And change ownsership

sudo chown -R pi:pi /Media

See mounting points:

lsblk

Mount Drive:

sudo mount /dev/sda2 /Media

Create folders:

sudo mkdir -p /Media/Movies
sudo mkdir -p /Media/Music
sudo mkdir -p /Media/TV\ Shows
sudo mkdir -p /Media/in_progress

sudo chown -R pi:pi /Media/Movies
sudo chown -R pi:pi /Media/TV\ Shows
sudo chown -R pi:pi /Media/in_progress

Keep drive mounted (automount) even when PI restarts:

sudo vim /etc/fstab

And enter the following at the end of the file: Recommended by fstab is to use UUID. UUID format is: UUID=<uuid-of-your-drive> <mount-point> <file-system-type> <mount-option> <dump> <pass>. Use sudo blkid to find and test it out with sudo mount -a My command will be:

UUID=7690cbc8-a262-40ba-a860-c47d499304c7 /Media ext4 defaults,auto,users,rw,nofail 0 0

What I used before and it worked but it's not recommended: /dev/sda2 /Media ext4 defaults,user 0 0

Reboot PI:

sudo reboot

Install Transmission¶

sudo apt install transmission-daemon -y

Stop transmission, so we can do some configuration:

sudo systemctl stop transmission-daemon

Add settings:

sudo vim /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json

And enter the following at the end of the file:

"incomplete-dir": "/Media/in_progress",
"download-dir": "/Media/Movies",
"incomplete-dir-enabled": true,
"rpc-password": "my-pass",
"rpc-username": "pi",
"rpc-whitelist": "192.168.*.*",

Change default user:

sudo vim /etc/init.d/transmission-daemon

Make sure that:

USER=pi

Edit service file:

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/transmission-daemon.service

Make sure that:

User=pi

Reload transmission:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Change ownershitp of some files into our permissions scope:

sudo chown -R pi:pi /etc/transmission-daemon
sudo chown -R pi:pi /etc/init.d/transmission-daemon
sudo chown -R pi:pi /var/lib/transmission-daemon

Other configurations:

sudo chown -R pi:pi /etc/transmission-daemon
sudo mkdir -p /home/pi/.config/transmission-daemon/
sudo ln -s /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json /home/pi/.config/transmission-daemon/
sudo chown -R pi:pi /home/pi/.config/transmission-daemon/

Start transmission:

sudo systemctl start transmission-daemon

Check status make sure everything is running smooth:

systemctl status transmission-daemon.service

Transmission available at http://192.168.50.11:9091.

Reboot PI:

sudo reboot

Install Plex¶

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
sudo apt autoremove -y

Add the official Plex package repository:

sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https

Add the Plex repositories to the “apt” package managers key list:

curl https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-keys/PlexSign.key | sudo apt-key add -

Add the official plex repository to the sources list by running the following command:

echo deb https://downloads.plex.tv/repo/deb public main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plexmediaserver.list

Run the “update” command again to refresh the package list:

sudo apt-get update

Install the Plex Media server package to the Pi:

sudo apt install plexmediaserver

Plex available at http://192.168.50.11:32400/web/.

The scanners and metadata agents used by Plex will work best when your major types of content are separated from each other. We strongly recommend separating movie and television content into separate main directories. For instance, you might use something like this:

/Media
   /Movies
      movie content
   /Music
      music content
   /TV Shows
      television content

TV Shows should have the following structure for first episode in first season naming (added example if there are two episodes in one):

/TV Shows
  /My Show
    /Season 01
      My Show - s01e01.format
      My Show - s01e02-03.format

Reboot PI:

sudo reboot

Update Plex¶

Download the *.deb file on the pi and install updates. For example if we have the plexmediaserver_1.22.1.4275-48e10484b_armhf.deb:

sudo dpkg -i plexmediaserver_1.22.1.4275-48e10484b_armhf.deb

Fix disk issues with `fsck`¶

sudo fsck -f -y /dev/sda2

Add exFat support¶

Inspired from here.

Exfat-fuse works as a module to FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) software system that allows the Raspbian operating system to mount and interpret exFAT drives without requiring extra privileges.

Exfat-utils provides all the utilities that you need to be able to deal with the exFAT format, including the ability to format drives on your Linux devices.

sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse
sudo apt-get install exfat-utils

Mounting an exFAT Drive Manually from Terminal

sudo mount -o ro,noload -t exfat /dev/sda2 /Media

Automatically mounted at boot read only (find UUID using sudo blkid):

/dev/sda2 /Media exfat defaults,auto,umask=000,users,ro,noload 0 0

/dev/disk/by-uuid/68271755-703c-48e6-a935-c1237de6b1a8 /mnt/HDD01 auto ro,nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0

Formatting a Drive as exFAT:

mkfs.exfat /dev/sda2

Media Home Server¶

Setup Pi4¶

Install updates¶

Install Vim¶

Setup Static IP¶

Setup External Hard-Drive¶

Install Transmission¶

Install Plex¶

Update Plex¶

Fix disk issues with fsck¶

Add exFat support¶

Fix disk issues with `fsck`¶