I wanted my own Netflix type server to stream my video files and used Tonido for that. But I recently connected to a friend’s Plex Server and I was blown away by the presentation and layout of Plex. Now, I want to use Plex again…even if it means reorganizing all 1TB of my media files. I think it’s worth it in the end for an authentic NetFlix like experience (which is what I wanted in the first place).

So I decided to go ahead and install Plex again (I used it before but was unwilling to reorganize my media files).

The first thing to do it to organize your files: Movies are gathered together in a “Movies” folder, TV Shows in a “TV Shows” folder, etc.:

Movies:
[Movie_Name (Release_Year)]
e.g., Avatar (2009).mp4

TV Shows:
/TV Shows/Show Name/Season/episodes
e.g., /TV Shows/Dexter/Season 01/Dexter s01e01.mp4

Now download the .deb file from https://plex.tv. Now open terminal “cd” to your downloads folder (or wherever you downloaded the .deb file).

Run: sudo dpkg -i plexmediaserver_0.9.8.18.290-11b7fdd_amd64.deb (or whatever the file name is).

To setup the Server, on the same machine you installed the Server on, open a browser window and go to http://127.0.0.1:32400/web.

Uninstall Plex Media Server

If you want to uninstall Plex (hypothetical situation, who would want to uninstall Plex) follow these steps:

Run: sudo apt-get purge plexmediaserver

Remove bulk of plex files: sudo rm -rf /var/lib/plexmediaserver

Remove plex user (very important!): sudo userdel plex

Remove both: /etc/init/plexmediaserver.conf and /etc/default/plexmediaserver
sudo rm /etc/init/plexmediaserver.conf
sudo rm /etc/default/plexmediaserver

You can also access your Plex Server from their website (https://plex.tv). Just login or create an account if you don’t have one. All your media will be right there. Sweet huh!?!

Tags: plexmediaserver, ubuntu