Plex Setup

Media streaming service.

Ports

Files

Docker Creation

You can copy your existing library from /var/lib/plexmediaserver/* to docker /config directory to auto-import your existing plex library.

The UID/GID should be set to a user/group that have access to your media. All media clients should run under the same user to run correctly.
Map your media directly to where it was before on the docker container to prevent needing to modify any libraries. This should be read-only.
/transcode needs to be mapped to a fast drive. See Setup /transcode with tmpfs to run transcoding in memory.
We additionally map the plex /tmp directory to a subdirectory for the transcoding directory. Plex updated transcoding to split video encoding to /transcode while the audio encoding is transcoded in /tmp. This causes the EAE timeout! EAE not running, or wrong folder? Could not read Error. Moving /tmp fixes this.
PLEX_CLAIM token is used to identify the server for your account. This is only used on initial startup without a pre-existing config. Generate a token here: https://www.plex.tv/claim.

Docker Compose

plex:
  image: plexinc/pms-docker:plexpass
  restart: unless-stopped
  network_mode: host
  environment:
    - CHANGE_CONFIG_DIR_OWNERSHIP=False
    - PLEX_GID=1001
    - PLEX_UID=1001
    - PLEX_CLAIM={CLAIM TOKEN}
    - TZ=America/Los_Angeles
  volumes:
    - /data/media:/data/media:ro
    - /data/services/plexmediaserver:/config
    - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    - /tmp/Transcode/tmp:/tmp
    - /tmp:/transcode

Stop Plex to finish configuration.

docker-compose stop plex

Setup `/transcode` with tmpfs

Transcoding is disk intensive and requires a fast (SSD or better) drive to make latencies transparent. This will setup /tmp with tmpfs (running in memory) to do transcoding in RAM, which will make playback and seeks nearly instantanenous.

Create tmpfs on the docker host.

0644 root root /etc/fstab

tmpfs  /tmp  tmpfs  defaults,size=4G  0  0

Note

Setup /tmp to use at most 4GB of RAM for storage (tmpfs only allocates space from actual items stored).

Ensure that /transcode is set on the plex server to properly map to the docker host /tmp directory.

Reboot to enable.

Enable Secure Server Connection

Ensure 32400 is forwarded from the router.
Enable DNS Rebinding on router.

If not using a plex claim token or manual port forwarding you may need to setup plex manually from the machine.

Setup SSH port forward.

ssh -L 32400:{DOCKER HOST}:32400 -N {USER}@{DOCKER HOST}

Then nagivate to http://localhost:32400/web/index.html to finish setup.

docker-compose up -d plex