How to Setup a Raspberry Pi Plex Server

In this tutorial, I go through all the steps to getting your very own Raspberry Pi plex server up and running.

This project is perfect for anyone who wants to have a media server that can be accessed by anyone within a household. You can also set it up to be accessed outside your local network.

Plex is a client-server setup where the client directly streams data from the Plex media server. This setup means you can have all your movies, music, and photos located on the one device, the server. In this case, we will be using the Raspberry Pi.

You can then have multiple clients connect to the same server. It is great as you don’t need to have multiple copies of the same media across several devices.

The Plex client is supported on a ton of devices including Windows, Apple, Android, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, Xbox, PlayStation, Linux, and so much more. It really is a fantastic home media solution.

If you just want a single client without the whole server setup, then something like the Raspberry Pi Kodi media center might interest you more.

If you are after an alternative completely free media server, you can also check out Jellyfin.

Equipment

You will need the following equipment to be able to complete this Raspberry Pi Plex server tutorial.

Optional

Raspberry Pi Case ( Amazon )
USB Keyboard ( Amazon )
USB Mouse ( Amazon )
External Hard drive ( Amazon ) or USB Drive ( Amazon ) (For storing movies, music & photos)

NOTE: This tutorial will not work on older versions of the Pi. A Raspberry Pi 2 or later will work.

Video

In this video project we will be walking you through the steps of installing the Plex Media Server to your Raspberry Pi.

Be sure to also check out the written version of our Plex guide below.

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Setting up the Raspberry Pi Plex Server

In this tutorial, I will be using Raspberry Pi OS so if you haven’t got it installed then check out my guide on how to setup Raspberry Pi OS.

If you want to run a slim version of the operating system, you should take a look at installing Raspberry Pi OS Lite.

Preparing your Pi for Plex

1. Now before we install the Plex Media Server software to the Raspberry Pi, we need first to ensure our operating system is entirely up to date by running the following two commands.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

2. To install the Plex packages to the Raspberry Pi, we will need to add the official Plex package repository.

Before we do that we need to install the “apt-transport-https” package.

This package allows the “apt” package manager to retrieve packages over the “https” protocol that the Plex repository uses.

Install the package by running the command below.

sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https

3. Let’s now add the Plex repositories to the “apt” keyrings directory.

This key is used to ensure the files that you are downloading are in fact from that repository and signed by that key.

Run the following command to download and save the key to our keyrings directory.

curl https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-keys/PlexSign.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/plex-archive-keyring.gpg >/dev/null

4. With the Plex GPG key now added, we can finally add the official plex repository to the sources list by running the following command.

echo deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/plex-archive-keyring.gpg] https://downloads.plex.tv/repo/deb public main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plexmediaserver.list

In the line we are adding, you can see that we refer to the keyring we downloaded in the previous step.

5. As we have just added a new repository to our sources, we will need to run the “update” command again to refresh the package list.

sudo apt-get update

If you get the error “/usr/lib/apt/methods/https could not be found.” Then the https transport package hasn’t been installed. Double check that it has been installed correctly.

Installing Plex to your Raspberry Pi

1. Now that we have set up our Raspberry Pi so that it can read from Plex’s official package repositories we can go ahead and finally install the Plex Media server package to the Pi.

To install the “plexmediaserver” package, run the command below.

sudo apt install plexmediaserver

2. The installation process for Plex sets up a few different things for us.

The first is that it creates a user and group for Plex to run under. This user and group is called “plex“.

It also will set up two directories, one where to store files temporarily that Plex is transcoding. You can find this folder at “/var/lib/plexmediaserver/tmp_transcoding“.

The second directory is where Plex will store all the metadata it retrieves for your media. This folder can be found at “/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support“

3. As Plex is running a different user to the Raspberry Pi’s default “pi” user, you will need to make sure you have permissions set correctly on your drive.

If you need help setting up your external drive with Plex, you can try following our guide on mounting a USB drive on the Raspberry Pi.

Setting a Static IP Address for your Plex Server

1. Now that we have installed Plex to our Raspberry Pi we should make sure that we are using a static IP address.

There are two reasons to use a static IP. One is that the IP will be easier to remember. Second is that it will make sure your Plex server can always be found at the same address.

To get your current IP address, enter the following command.

hostname -I

2. Now open up the cmdline.txt file.

sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt

3. At the bottom of this file, add the following line: (Replacing “YOUR IP” with the IP you got from using hostname -I)

ip=YOUR IP

4. Once done, exit by pressing CTRL + X and then Y to save.

5. Now simply restart the Pi by running the following command.

sudo reboot

6. The Pi should now always start with the same IP. You can also set this on most routers by tying the mac address of your network device (WiFi or Ethernet) to an IP.

Now the Raspberry Pi Plex media server should be all set up and ready to scan your media and stream it any client that wishes to connect. I will go through some basics of setting everything up below.

Storing Media on the Raspberry Pi

Now there are several ways to store your media on the Raspberry Pi. I will mention each of the methods below.

You can hook up an external hard drive with all your music, movies and whatever else you may have. Setting the Plex program to run as the Pi user means you can plug a USB hard drive in and access the media in Plex without any issues.

You’re also able to mount drives permanently; I have already covered this in a previous tutorial, so be sure to check out my guide on how to mount a USB hard drive to the Raspberry Pi. Make sure you set the user & group owner of the drive to Pi.

Another option is to set your Pi up as a NAS. This will allow you to transfer your media across to it without needing to disconnect and reconnect a hard drive.

You can set this all up by following my tutorial on setting up a Raspberry Pi network attached storage.

Lastly, you can use the SD card for storage, but as you could imagine, this will quickly run out of space. You can set up a folder on the SD card to be accessed via the network.

Connecting Clients to The Plex Media Server on the Raspberry Pi

If you’re using an app on your phone, computer, Xbox, PlayStation, or any other device, then the Plex client should be able to pick up on the server automatically.

You will, unfortunately, find the official mobile Plex applications are behind a paywall. For example, you will need to pay money to get full access to all the features. However, all other apps, including the web app, should be free with only a small set of features requiring a subscription.

To connect to the browser, enter the IP followed by the port 32400 and /web/. For example, mine is.

192.168.1.100:32400/web/

You will be prompted to log in, simply sign up or sign in to an existing plex account. You can skip this by just entering by entering the address above again.

Next, you will need to set up your music, movie, and TV show libraries. This process is incredibly easy and shouldn’t be too hard in getting it set up correctly.

1. First select add library in the left-hand side column.

2. Next, select the type of media that is in the folder. If you have more than one type, then you will need to add a new library for each type of media.

3. Next, you will need to select the folder that has all your media in it.

For example, mine is on a USB drive that is displayed in the left-hand side column or can be found at /media/pi/ESD-USB

4. Once you add the library, it will now organize your clips in a nice easy to browse interface.

If you need more information on how to setup, name and organize your media library, then Plex has an amazing amount of documentation on naming and organization.

Fixing File Permission Errors with Plex

One of the most common problems you may run into with Plex on your Raspberry Pi is with it being unable to access your files. The most common cause of this issue is incorrect permissions.

This section will show you how to modify the permissions for an ext4 drive.

If you are running an NTFS or FAT formatted drive, you will need to try remounting your disk drive and adjusting its mounting options. The reason for this is that the NTFS and FAT filesystems do not support the Linux permission system.

1. To begin, work out the location of the drive or folder that you want to adjust the permissions for.

For example, we have an ext4 drive mounted to our Raspberry Pi at the location /mnt/pimounteddisk/.

2. As the next two commands need to be executed as the superuser, let’s change to it by running the following command.

sudo su

3. With the path to your drive or folder in hand, we are going to make use of the following two commands.

Make sure that when you run these that you replace [YOURDRIVEPATH], with the path you want to adjust permissions on.

find [YOURDRIVEPATH] -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find [YOURDRIVEPATH] -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

The second command finds all directories and assigns the owner “read“, “write” and “execute” privileges and gives all other uses “read” and “execute” privileges.

The third command is used to find all files and will assign the owner “read” and “write” privileges, and all other users will get the “read” permission.

4. Once those commands have finished running, we can go ahead and exit out of the superuser mode.