Using Plex Media Server with My Cloud

Has anyone been successful using My Cloud w/ plex?  I know that you can not install Plex on the My Cloud but can you at least add media content to your Plex Server running on a computer.  I have tried mapping the drive but Plex still does not show the drive as an option to add media content.

Thank you in advance for any help you may be able to offer.

Hi there and welcome to the WD community.

I have not tried this, hopefully another user can share some advice with you.  

Hi, yes it works…Just type \WDMYCLOUD\ when adding folder sections.

Haven’t tried it yet but this procedure for running a Plex Server seems it may work: https://bitbucket.org/inkubux/cubox-i/wiki/Plex%20Wheezy

2 Likes

It can work for older v3 firmwares, but not the recent v4 ones…

Yep. Forgot mentioning that. Would need a v.3 series firmware  or eventually a Clean Debian.

I’ll try to build plex later when time permits, currently working on pyload.

I’m still with v4 because of the samba4 transfer speed, 108Mbps read 70Mbps write…OMV seems have issue with samba.

Just tried the armel chroot approach (on clean Debian). Somehow it does not start :confounded::

(wheezyArmel)root@Cloud:# plexmediaserver
/opt/plex/Application/Plex Media Server: error while loading shared libraries: /opt/plex/Application/libboost_regex.so.1.50.0: file too short

Forget the above, just tried with latest Plex version for Drobo (Version 0.9.11.1.678-c48ffd) and it does work!

Nazar78 → I would advise anyone with a reasonable Linux proficiency against OMV, and stick to a clean Debian.

OMV gets you stuck to a bunch of “stable” outdated versions, most notably:

  • You will get OwnCloud 6 while you can get v. 7 from Wheezy-backports
  • You will get a very old MiniDLNA which does not organize/show folders as well
  • You will get a buggy Aria2 version

I ended up removing OMV packages and now have a mostly pointless resource consuming eye candy interface.

Pulling a working Plex Server for MyCloud would be awesome. Hope you can get it going.

@hvalentim,

Yup I’m skipping OMV and still on V4 with owncloud 7.0.2, minidlna 1.1.4 and I prefer lftp.

Can you please explain why ? 

It would be awsome to have Plex media server on My Cloud :slight_smile:

Or, is there any tutorial to install clean debian + mydlna + transmission ?

Thanks

Ermm, installing plex on the latest v4 firmwares is not possible due to closed source code…

Disregard my previous failure report on this thread.

I am glad to inform that I was able to sucessfuly install and run Plex Media Server on MyCloud with Clean Debian by following the procedure described here:  https://bitbucket.org/inkubux/cubox-i/wiki/Plex%20Wheezy

A few notes:

  1. I used latest Drobo NAS build: https://plex.tv/downloads (Package for Drobo 5N Version 0.9.11.1.678-c48ffd2).
  2. You will need to install the wheezy-armel chroot OUTSIDE of the md raid 2GB partition (Plex server itself is huge, this is a MUST). Locate it somewhere in /DataVolume and adapt appliable paths supplied in above instructions page.
  3. You will need to add extra chroot bind mount points to /etc/fstab so as to make your /DataVolume/shares/Whatever_Data_Folders available to Plex inside the chroot environment.

Hello,

Thanx to the help, I managed to install a CleanDebian and Plex media server but I’m still learning to get comfortable with Debian.

To make data accessible in Plex you said:

_"_You will need to add extra chroot bind mount points to /etc/fstab so as to make your /DataVolume/shares/Whatever_Data_Folders available to Plex inside the chroot environment."

Unfortunately the line I added to /etc/fstab didn’t do the trick (Assuming my sda4 was mounted to /data and I wanted to add the music in the folder /data/shares/Music

/music     /data/shares/Music     none  bind  0  0

If I enter the chroots in the terminal, the folder /music is empty.

Any advices? Sorry if this is a stupid question - this is my first experience with chroots…

Thank you!

PS: A second question: I intended to change the chroots installation so that it is installed on the 3TB partition but df shows the following:

rootfs              1968336              1738100                 130248             94%         /
/dev/root         1968336              1738100                 130248             94%         /

/dev/sda4      2879644152       189549284             2631583836   7%            /data
/dev/root         1968336             1738100                 130248             94%         /data/plex/chroots/wheezy-armel/home
/dev/root         1968336            1738100                  130248             94%         /data/plex/chroots/wheezy-armel/mnt

Does that mean I rather installed Plex on the root partition?

Nazar78 wrote:

I’ll try to build plex later when time permits, currently working on pyload.

 

I’m still with v4 because of the samba4 transfer speed, 108Mbps read 70Mbps write…OMV seems have issue with samba.

@Nazar78  Could you please elaborate on the samba speed. Are you saying that its faster on V4 FW?

Also you mentioned spees in Mbps and not MB/S. Which one is it?

I’m currently on V3 and on a gigabit lan. I easily get constant 70MB/S read and around 50MB/S write… Are you saying V4 is faster? 

@alirz1

I meant MBps which is MB/s not Mbps (auto complete thingy). Yes for me v4 is faster than v3.

v3 average = read 70-80MB/s (peak 85), write 30-60MB/s (jumpy inconsistent 30-60).

v4 average = read 90-100MB/s (peak 109), write 60-70MB/s (peak 76).

The transfers were done between the same router, laptop, switch and wdmycloud cat6 wired.

@ Nazar

You think there is something else in FW4 causing this speed bump or is it simply a newer version of samba that could be install on V3 FW to get better speeds?

@State_flux, if you want access your music folder into the chroot you must mount it into the chroot 

/music     /data/shares/Music     none  bind  0  0   → mount outsite chroot

 you can replace by 

/data/shares/Music           /data/plex/chroots/wheezy-armel/media/music

then you Music forlder is mount in /media/music of the chroot.

Plex work fine on my system, but i must install libexpat1 package into the chroot, whitout it i’ve got error when i try to play movie.

Just to add to this.  You don’t need to go through the clean Debian steps.  

All you need is a v3 Firmware.  I’d already updated so I followed this guide:  http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud/GUIDE-How-To-Unbrick-your-2TB-3TB-4TB-My-Cloud/td-p/765959 to go back to v3.

Then follow the bitbucket guide.  I had to add contrib and non-free to the /etc/apt/source.list to install debootstrap.

Once the chroot is setup, add libexpat1 (apt-get install libexpat1) 

Once you have Plex installed, in the WD UI, turn off DNLA media sharing and add the shares you want to share through plex (ie TV, FILMS, 3D) then add them to the /etc/fstab in addition to those described in the guide:

I added: 

/home            /DataVolume/chroots/wheezy-armel/home            none bind 0 0

/mnt             /DataVolume/chroots/wheezy-armel/mnt             none bind 0 0

/tmp             /DataVolume/chroots/wheezy-armel/tmp             none bind 0 0

/proc            /DataVolume/chroots/wheezy-armel/proc            proc defaults 0 0

/dev             /DataVolume/chroots/wheezy-armel/dev             none bind 0 0

/dev/pts         /DataVolume/chroots/wheezy-armel/dev/pts          none bind 0 0

/nfs/Movies     /DataVolume/chroots/wheezy-armel/movies           none bind 0 0

/nfs/TV /DataVolume/chroots/wheezy-armel/TV           none bind 0 0

/nfs/3D_Movies  /DataVolume/chroots/wheezy-armel/3D_Movies           none bind 0 0

where /DataVolume is my version of /data in the guide…

The bottom 3 rows are my Datashares.  Then in plex I add a Movies share and use “/movies” as the directory.

Another change I had to make was change LC_ALL=C in the startup script.  I’m not sure why but the US locale didn’t work for me.

Just another update…

When it came to making plex start up from boot using the runcontrol scripts I had to add ‘mount -a’ as mycloud’s debian wasn’t doing so.

When it comes to actually trying to use this, it’s apparent that the MyCloud isn’t up to it.  If you have a large library of media (mines 2.5Tb) with whole series (over a thousand files).  Plex on WD MyCloud just can’t handle it, it spent all night building the library but then when I try to browse it, it times out.  It’s probably just a lack of memory more than anything, which is a shame.

Oh well it was fun trying.

To any WD folks reading this.  Plex is an excellent media manager and when you’re spec’ing the next iteration of NAS drives you should keep it in mind.  Small form factor + Plex = Win.

1 Like