I believe it’s a known bug where it might - every great once in a while - change the art anyway, but this is how it’s supposed to work.
I’ve managed plenty of libraries over the years, and setting a custom poster keeps it that way— again, except in rare cases where something bugs out. but this is how it’s supposed to work.
if you still experience weirdness, I recommend going to “Troubleshooting” under your server settings and running both “Optimize database” and “Clean Bundles"
your server has what it needs to run GNOME just fine. you might wish to disable some of the more fancy graphics animations, but they shouldn’t be a problem at all. they run fine for me on a much older system than yours.
but, if you really want to bare-bones it with a DE, XFCE or LXQt get the job done, but are pretty basic— to the point I find annoying, personally, but you do you. Most of your interaction will be through your web browser for Plex apps, and via the command line for everything else.
Edit: I’d love to keep helping you with your setup, but the thread is getting a bit long. How about we move this chat over to the c/Plex space on Matrix? Matrix is an open-source, federated messaging space like Discord. you can create an account and choose a client (I recommend Element) which you can run via app or webapp.
imagine mid-80s Apple with Steve Jobs constantly screaming at you after you’ve worked 75 hours without sleep, except you’re NOT working on anything revolutionary, you’re getting paid shit, and you’re practically alone in the office because everyone else got laid off. also, everyone on earth hates you except a select cadre of nazis who spend most of their time fellating Elon on the platform you’re barely able to keep running.
oh, this one’s easy: star with a live image to fiddle with first. I would recommend GNOME/GDE as your Desktop Environment (DE). you can choose another later (which is great), but that’s a basic on that’s most similar to what you’re used to. Odd that’s not in the list of options you listed… it’s by far the most common and usually the default…
but, yeah, start with a live DVD (great for a restore disk!) and play around to get acclimated. it’s also great to install from!
ok, I see. well, sorry for your rural troubles, and best of luck with your new solution. you might look into a micro/femtocell from your mobile provider to provide hi-speed data service as an alternative to hard-wired service!
keep in mind that sometimes Sonarr/Radarr will update/refresh files in the background when they find newer copies that better match your set file parameters. IE, if you have a download profile which accepts both x264 and x265-encoded files but prefers x265, it may download the x264 when first available and then a x265 copy when it become available later. or a Dolby 2.1 audio version initially and a Dolby Atmos copy later when it finds one.
this is compounded if your run Checkrr and it finds/replaces corrupted media files.
All this can happen (and does) in the background and can explain unexpected library updates.
btw, ripping your own media is a waste of time and resources unless you simple cannot find what you’re looking for via torrent. 999/1000 downloading something will take a tiny fraction of the time (and system resources) it will to rip it.
One way to be sure it doesn’t do this is to manually choose you artwork for each item. This will lock in your choice, especially if you upload custom artwork from, say, theposterdb.com. Yes, this can be a real pain.
Plex updates poster art to stay “fresh” and assumes you’re ok with this if you never set a custom poster yourself. So, as I said, manually choose a poster for the media, and it should remember this choice moving forward. If the default choice is what you like, select something else, then switch back to make sure Plex knows you intentionally selected it.
I, like almost anyone else here, will recommend linux. I’ll get back to that later.
Your hardware setup is… fine. Plex has pretty low hardware requirements and runs well on old hardware. The real hangups are memory minimums and the ability for hardware-based transcoding. The second you have covered with a CPU with QuickSync enabled. The first: you’re going to want upgrade to 16GB when you can, but 8GB will get you by for now. The memory is less for Plex itself and more for the stack of companion apps you’ll want to install alongside it, the minimum of which include:
Sonarr (for automating tv show downloads)
Radarr (for automating film downloads)
Prowlarr (enables multiple trackers and forwarding search and results to Sonarr/Radarr)
a torrent client (transmission, qbittorent, etc.)
VPN client container(s) (this setup depends on your VPN and the setup may range form ‘easy’ to ’nightmare’ depending on the service you use)
Docker, to run all of this in containers (including PMS itself)
(see the c/Plex add-ons guide for more info on these app and links to setup guides)
Now to you choice in linux distro: In the past, I would have recommended Ubuntu, but it’s been on the outs lately since they’ve switched their software distribution model to Snaps rather than the industry—standard Flatpacks, making life difficult for some people. Instead, I would recommend Debian (what Ubuntu is based on), as it has improved dramatically in usability and ease of setup. And software that works/is built for Ubuntu works for Debian, so you’ll have a wide breadth of available software packages. It’s a 30 year-old distro that’s stable, reliable, and very well-known, so it’s not going anywhere and has tons of community support. It makes for an excellent server OS.
One alternate I’ve seen people mention is Pop_OS!. It’s based on Ubuntu (but uses Flatpacks) and has a slick, shiny, custom version of GNOME, but, as a server OS, offers little advantage over, say, Debian. It’s biggest advantage for users is their proprietary NVIDIA driver solution which is the only one i’ve seen work out of the box on linux, but that’s not an issue for you.
I’d stick with Debian if I were you. It’s simple, easy to set up (relatively), and you’ll have zero trouble finding all of the software and support you need in abundance.
I hope this helps. If you need any more support or have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!
ADDENDUM: your data access speeds to your HDDs is not a real priority. Streaming the data from your drives takes little data bandwidth, so while it would be nice if all of your drives were internal, it’s not necessary. Many people use external, NAS, and even cloud storage solutions without issue. The main issue is capacity. You’ll use that up pretty quickly and also quickly notice that you’re buying new hard dives often to meet your demand for more capacity.
On that note, arrange your media storage (not your boot drive) into an LVM (Logical Volume Management) drive pool solution where your drives are a unified storage pool to which you can simply add another drive when the storage pool runs low on space. LVM basically treats a group of HDDs as a single drive, distributing the data evenly across them. And, if one drives started going bad, the LVM software can shift the data off of it so it can be removed from the pool (ideally onto a new drive you add first).
12·11 months ago
