Install Plex Media Server on Raspberry Pi 3

Install Plex Media Server on Raspberry Pi 3 2017. Plex media server let you stream your media on any device starting from your Phone, Tablets, Roku and many more. This allows you to manage your entire media collection such as video, music and pictures.
In this tutorial you will learn simple steps on how to install Plex media server on a Raspberry Pi 3. This tutorial includes the installation of Torrent application (Transmission). This will help you to movies on the web easily. We will install samba server for file sharing. This will make it easy for you to manage your movies on your network.
 
What you need:

• Noobs or Raspbian installed in Raspberry Pi
• Setup Static IP on Raspberry Pi
• Putty

 
Raspberry Pi details:

• Static IP: 192.168.2.200
• Movies Folder: /home/pi/movies
• Application to install:
  • Plex media server
  • Https transport
  • Transmission torrent
  • Samba file sharing

Please watch the video tutorial about how to install Plex media server

 

Setup a Static IP on Raspberry Pi 3

On this step we will set static IP on Wifi. If you want to configure static IP for Ethernet please read my previous post about setting up a static IP address on Raspberry Pi 3
On Putty type the IP address of your Raspberry pi or type the domain name raspberrypi.local
 
Let’s start editing the network interfaces

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

 
Below code is the default configuration. If you see the same code, leave it.

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet manual
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet manual
    wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

 
Edit the Dhcpcp configuration

sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf

 
And paste the code listed below:

interface wlan0
     static ip_address=192.168.2.200/24
     static routers=192.168.2.1
     static domain_name_servers=192.168.2.1

 
Ensure dhcpcd and networking service are enabled

sudo systemctl enable dhcpcd
sudo systemctl enable networking

 
To apply the change we made, please reboot your Raspberry Pi

sudo reboot

 
Login to your Raspberry Pi again and test your internet

sudo apt-get update

 

Install Plex Media server on Raspberry Pi 3

Installing Plex on Raspberry Pi is a little different compare to Linux computers. Please follow along as this tutorial guide you the way.
Step 1: Add the dev2day repository to our source list

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
add this line below
deb https://dev2day.de/pms/ jessie main

Download the key from dev2day and add the key

wget https://dev2day.de/pms/dev2day-pms.gpg.key
sudo apt-key add dev2day-pms.gpg.key

 
Step 2: Install https transport package

sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https

 
Step 3: Install the Plex media server package

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -t jessie plexmediaserver

 
Step 4: Change the permission by adding pi user to Plex media server user

sudo nano /etc/default/plexmediaserver

 
Find and Change the user as pi.

PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_USER=pi

 
Restart the service

sudo service plexmediaserver restart

 
Go to your web browser and type the address : [your raspberry pi ip address] followed by :32400/web
In my case its 192.168.2.200:32400/web

Sign in using your account details. Please sign up to create an account.


Let stop here for a moment and install torrent application.
 

Installing Torrent application Transmission on Raspberry pi 3

In the next step we will install Transmission as our Torrent application
Back it our terminal, start installing Transmission

sudo apt-get install transmission-daemon

 
Stop the service first.

sudo service transmission-daemon stop

 
Make a backup of the default configuration first

sudo cp /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json.bak 

 
Let’s start editing the configuration

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

 
Find and replace with the value listed below:

"rpc-authentication-required": false
"rpc-whitelist": "127.0.0.1,192.168.2.*"

The rpc-whitelist IP address starting from 127 is a loop and do not remove it. The address starting from 192 is your network address. Please change it according to your network IP address. Save and exit.
 
Now set the default folder for Transmission downloads and change its permission. Go to users root directory and create a folder where movies will be stored

cd
mkdir movies
/home/pi/movies

 
Set transmission default download folder

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

 
Edit according to the details below. Unmask:2 is used to set every file downloaded owned by the group.

"download-dir": "/home/pi/movies"
"umask": 2

 
Changing folder permission. User pi will be added to debian-transmission group and the group will have full access (chmod 770) to the movies folder

sudo usermod -a -G debian-transmission pi
sudo chgrp debian-transmission /home/pi/movies
sudo chmod 770 /home/pi/movies

Now run Transmission

sudo service transmission-daemon start

Go to your web browser and type the address below:
raspberrypi.local:9091/transmission/web/
or
192.168.2.200:9091/transmission/web/
Try to download torrent file or get a magnet links from the web and add it the Transmission web interface. It should download  and will be saved in the default folder we set.
 

Install and set up Samba Server

We need share the folder on the network so we can organize our files. To do that we need to install Samba server.

sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin
sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

 
Find and change the value according to below details:

workgroup = WORKGROUP
wins support = yes

Go down and paste the code:

[PlexMedia]
     comment=Plex Media Files
     path=/home/pi/movies
     browseable=Yes
     writeable=Yes
     only guest=no
     create mask=0777
     directory mask=0777
     public=no

To turn the folder visible to everyone in the network, please change public as yes.
Add pi user to Samba server and enter the password twice

sudo smbpasswd -a pi

Test the file sharing if it works on Windows computer. Open a window and type the address: \\192.168.2.200
The PlexMedia folder should appear. All movies downloaded by the Torrent will show up here.

You can also copy, paste or delete movies in this folder.
 

Configuring Plex Media Server on the web browser

Go back to your browser. Since we already logged in and on the Server setup page, click Add Library

Select Movies

Browse for Media folder

and locate the folder /home/pi/movies

Finally, your saved movies will appear on the main page.
If your Roku is on the same network as your Raspberry Pi, it should also work.
Congratulation you just installed a Plex Media Server on a Raspberry Pi.