Plex Media Server

Deploy Plex, a streaming platform that lets you organize and stream your own digital video and audio to your devices.

After deploying the app, you can upload media to your Plex Server and connect to it from a Plex client application. If you need additional disk space for your Plex Server, consider using our Block Storage service with this app.

Additional features, including local downloading, bandwidth limiting, and hardware transcoding, are available through the paid Plex Pass service.

1. Deploy Plex Server

 Estimated deployment time: 2–5 minutes

Software included

Software installed on your Linode when deploying the app.

Base distribution and plan

• Supported distribution: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
• Recommended plans: 4GB Dedicated CPU or Shared Compute Instance.

Configuration options

StackScript ID: 662119

Notes:

• After the app deployment completes, the password for your limited sudo user is generated and stored in the .credentials file in the home directory, along with application-specific passwords. Log in to your instance as root through the Lish console or SSH, then run cat /home/$USERNAME/.credentials to view its contents.
• You can automatically configure a custom domain (optional) during deployment. To do that:
  1. First, configure your domain to use Linode’s name servers via your registrar. See Configure your domain's authoritative name servers for details.
  2. Once you complete that, specify the Linode API token, subdomain, and domain for the app in Cloud Manager or via API/CLI/Terraform.

Use API, CLI, or Terraform

curl --location 'https://api.linode.com/v4/linode/instances' \
    --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    --header 'Accept: application/json' \
    --header 'Authorization: Bearer abc123def456hij789klm' \
    --data-raw '{
        "region": "us-east",
        "type": "g6-standard-2",
        "image": "linode/ubuntu24.04",
        "label": "my-plex-one-click-app",
        "root_pass": "@C0mpl3x#P@ssw0rd",
        "stackscript_id": 662119,
        "stackscript_data": {
            "user_name": "jsmith",
            "soa_email_address": "jsmith@example.com"
        }
    }'

linode-cli linodes create \
    --region us-east \
    --type g6-standard-2 \
    --label my-plex-one-click-app \
    --image linode/ubuntu24.04 \
    --root_pass @C0mpl3x#P@ssw0rd \
    --stackscript_id 662119 \
    --stackscript_data '{""user_name":"jsmith", "soa_email_address":"jsmith@example.com"}'

resource "linode_instance" "my-linode" {
    region         = "us-east"
    type           = "g6-standard-2"
    label          = "my-plex-one-click-app"
    image          = "linode/ubuntu24.04"
    root_pass      = "@C0mpl3x#P@ssw0rd"
    stackscript_id = 662119
    stackscript_data = {
        "user_name"         = "jsmith"
        "soa_email_address" = "jsmith@example.com"
    }
}

2. Access Plex Server

After your Plex Server has been deployed, you can upload media and configure access to your Plex Server from Plex clients for your media devices.

Before you begin, ensure that you've signed up to Plex.

Initial setup

Administration of your Plex Server is performed from its web interface.

1. Open a web browser and go to the custom domain provided during deployment, or the instance’s default rDNS.
2. Use your email or username and password to log in to Plex. Then click Sign in.
3. On the Server Setup page, enter a name for your Plex server and select the Allow me to access my media outside my home checkbox. Click NEXT.
4. Skip the Media Library setup for now by clicking NEXT. You'll upload media and add media libraries later.
5. To finish the initial setup, click DONE.
6. Click the Settings icon in the top-right corner of the Plex web interface.
7. On the left sidebar, ensure your new Plex Server is selected and in the Settings section, select Remote Access.
8. Select the Manually specify public port checkbox and keep the default value of 32400. Click Retry or Apply. You may need to select Show advanced to see these settings.
9. Wait until you see a message stating that your Plex Server is Fully accessible outside your network.

You can now access uploaded media and manage your Plex Server from any Plex Client, such as the Plex Web App. If you're unable to reach your Plex Server remotely, you can repeat the steps in this section to re-establish a direct connection for administrative purposes.

Connect a Block Storage Volume (optional)

If your media collection is larger than the space available from your Linode plan, you can create and connect a Block Storage Volume for use with your Plex Server.

1. Add a Block Storage Volume in Cloud Manager if you don’t have one already.

2. Establish an SSH connection to your Plex Server Linode as your limited sudo user.

3. On your Plex Server Linode, create a directory to your volume’s mountpoint.

   Bash

   mkdir ~/plex/media/linode-volume

4. Mount your volume path to the mountpoint you created, replacing $FILE_SYSTEM_PATH with your volume’s file system path. You can get the path in Cloud Manager’s Volumes dashboard.

   Bash

   sudo mount $FILE_SYSTEM_PATH ~/plex/media/linode-volume

5. Check the available disk space.

   Note that there's some overhead with the volume due to the file system.

   CommandOutput

   df -BG

   Filesystem     1G-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
   udev                  1G    0G        1G   0% /dev
   tmpfs                 1G    1G        1G  11% /run
   /dev/sda             49G    3G       45G   5% /
   tmpfs                 1G    0G        1G   0% /dev/shm
   tmpfs                 1G    0G        1G   0% /run/lock
   tmpfs                 1G    0G        1G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
   tmpfs                 1G    0G        1G   0% /run/user/1000
   /dev/sdc             20G    1G       19G   1% /home/username/plex/media/linode-volume

6. Ensure that your volume automatically mounts every time your Linode reboots by running this command, replacing $FILE_SYSTEM_PATH with your volume’s file system path.

   The $HOME environment variable should already be set as your user’s home directory.

   Bash

   echo "$FILE_SYSTEM_PATH $HOME/plex/media/linode-volume ext4 defaults,noatime,nofail 0 2" | \
   sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

   The command modifies your /etc/fstab file.

7. Restart your Plex Server Docker container.

   Bash

   docker restart plex

Media on your volume is now accessible through the Plex web interface at the mounted directory on your Linode.

Next, you can upload media to your volume (use your volume’s mountpoint instead of creating a new subdirectory) and add media libraries to enable streaming media stored on your volume.

Upload media

Your Plex Server is set up to access media files in the ~/plex/media directory.

This section shows you how to organize and upload files to your Plex Server either on your Plex Server Linode through an SSH connection as your limited sudo user, or from the workstation terminal where the media files you want to upload are stored.

• On your Plex Server Linode, create a subdirectory within ~/plex/media to store your media files.

  Plex recommends organizing media by type. To follow that guidance, define a subdirectory name that matches the type of media you want to upload.

  Bash

  mkdir ~/plex/media/movies

• From your media workstation, run the scp command to move media to your Plex Server’s media subdirectory, substituting $USERNAME with your Linux limited sudo username, and $IP_ADDRESS with the IP address of your Plex Server Linode.

  Bash

  scp example_video.mp4 $USERNAME@$IP_ADDRESS:~/plex/media/movies

Depending on the files’ sizes, the upload may take a few minutes.

To use the other way to upload files to your Plex Server Linode, see the Linux System Administration Basics guide for details.

Add media libraries

1. Log in to a Plex Client, such as the Plex Web App, and on the sidebar, click More.
2. Hover over your Plex Server’s name in the Plex sidebar and click the plus (+) icon.
3. Select your library type, set a name and language for your media library. Click Next.
4. Click Browse for media folder. Go to the directory within /media where your files are stored and click Add.
5. Once you select the file, click Add library.
6. Pin your new media library to make it accessible from the Plex home screen.

Repeat the steps in this section to add additional media folders.

You now have all the tools you need to create an online media library and stream it to any device with Plex.

Additional resources

For more information about the installed packages, see their official documentation.

• Plex Support Articles