Plex server

[jpecora93]

That was my main purpose for buying a pine, too. There was one guy in Plex Forum who tried it already but with no success so far. Actually, I have no idea where to start. I'm not that familiar with Linux but I definitely try to get into that.

Code:

sudo su -
wget -O - https://dev2day.de/pms/dev2day-pms.gpg.key | apt-key add -
echo "deb https://dev2day.de/pms/ jessie main" >/etc/apt/sources.list.d/pms.list
dpkg --add-architecture armhf
apt-get update
apt-get install binutils:armhf
apt-get install --no-install-recommends plexmediaserver-installer

works on longsleep's original Ubuntu image. But forget about transcoding, Pine64 is not a fast Intel box 

The RPI2 actually can trans code any audio on mine. I just got my Pine64 up and running with Plex and it will actually trans code a video from 1080P to 720P without a problem. I think the reasons the Pine is much faster is 1.) The GB Ethernet is a huge step up. 2.) The 64bit processor and 2GB of memory. I know that the 2GB of memory is not used that much by Plex but the ability for the overhead processes to stay in memory helps a ton. The biggest factor in the performance boost I am seeing is the Proc and the network connection.

Thanks
tkaiser  for the instructions. It worked perfectly.

[tkaiser]

I just got my Pine64 up and running with Plex and it will actually trans code a video from 1080P to 720P without a problem. I think the reasons the Pine is much faster is 1.) The GB Ethernet is a huge step up. 2.) The 64bit processor and 2GB of memory. I know that the 2GB of memory is not used that much by Plex but the ability for the overhead processes to stay in memory helps a ton. The biggest factor in the performance boost I am seeing is the Proc and the network connection.

Thanks
tkaiser  for the instructions. It worked perfectly.

Glad to help. And yes, you're right, Pine64 transcodes but since I tried it with my 'usual' test video first (jellyfish-100-mbps-hd-hevc.mkv which plays flawlessly in mpv with full video HW acceleration locally) and Plex complained about Pine64 being too slow I made a wrong assumption. Using the 50mbps variant of the same H.265 video surprisingly worked and I remembered what RPi-Monitor was made for (monitoring made easy) to verify all CPU cores are busy

And now we just have to wait maybe 8-12 weeks until the instructions above are added to a FAQ or a pinned post so that many other threads asking for Plex might appear in the forums. And then in 8-12 weeks a few more OS images were thrown in the wild and then new threads can be started why 'apt-get' only throws error messages when executed in OpenSuse, Fedora, CentOS or whatever OS image has been hacked together until then. It's all too funny.

---

I think the reasons the Pine is much faster is 1.) The GB Ethernet is a huge step up. 2.) The 64bit processor and 2GB of memory

The 64 bit are not involved in any way but Pine64 is faster than RPi 2 even when running ARMv7 code (the installation method downloads a Plex server package provided by Synology that is able to run on really aging ARM SoCs):

Code:

tk@pain64:~$ file /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex\ Media\ Server
/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux.so.3, for GNU/Linux 2.6.16, stripped

DRAM isn't an issue either (with a headless OS image even the 512MB Pine64 will do fine)

But what might make a huge difference is that every Raspberry Pi out there only has one single USB2.0 connection to the outside (using an internal USB hub with implanted Fast Ethernet chip). So when dealing with media on an external disk every single bit passes the USB twice (disk --> SoC --> network) and this becomes really fast a bottleneck. And while Pine64 is also rather limited in this regard compared to other SBC the Ethernet NIC uses an own bus and USB also.

When/if networking challenges with the little Pine64 are resolved it should be able to run Plex with streaming rates of up to 90Mbits/sec also there.

[jpecora93]

I just got my Pine64 up and running with Plex and it will actually trans code a video from 1080P to 720P without a problem. I think the reasons the Pine is much faster is 1.) The GB Ethernet is a huge step up. 2.) The 64bit processor and 2GB of memory. I know that the 2GB of memory is not used that much by Plex but the ability for the overhead processes to stay in memory helps a ton. The biggest factor in the performance boost I am seeing is the Proc and the network connection.

Thanks
tkaiser  for the instructions. It worked perfectly.

Glad to help. And yes, you're right, Pine64 transcodes but since I tried it with my 'usual' test video first (jellyfish-100-mbps-hd-hevc.mkv which plays flawlessly in mpv with full video HW acceleration locally) and Plex complained about Pine64 being too slow I made a wrong assumption. Using the 50mbps variant of the same H.265 video surprisingly worked and I remembered what RPi-Monitor was made for (monitoring made easy) to verify all CPU cores are busy

And now we just have to wait maybe 8-12 weeks until the instructions above are added to a FAQ or a pinned post so that many other threads asking for Plex might appear in the forums. And then in 8-12 weeks a few more OS images were thrown in the wild and then new threads can be started why 'apt-get' only throws error messages when executed in OpenSuse, Fedora, CentOS or whatever OS image has been hacked together until then. It's all too funny.

---

I think the reasons the Pine is much faster is 1.) The GB Ethernet is a huge step up. 2.) The 64bit processor and 2GB of memory

The 64 bit are not involved in any way but Pine64 is faster than RPi 2 even when running ARMv7 code (the installation method downloads a Plex server package provided by Synology that is able to run on really aging ARM SoCs):

Code:

tk@pain64:~$ file /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex\ Media\ Server
/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux.so.3, for GNU/Linux 2.6.16, stripped

DRAM isn't an issue either (with a headless OS image even the 512MB Pine64 will do fine)

But what might make a huge difference is that every Raspberry Pi out there only has one single USB2.0 connection to the outside (using an internal USB hub with implanted Fast Ethernet chip). So when dealing with media on an external disk every single bit passes the USB twice (disk --> SoC --> network) and this becomes really fast a bottleneck. And while Pine64 is also rather limited in this regard compared to other SBC the Ethernet NIC uses an own bus and USB also.

When/if networking challenges with the little Pine64 are resolved it should be able to run Plex with streaming rates of up to 90Mbits/sec also there.

So do you think the Plex Gods will come up with a 64bit version so it can fully utilize the Proc? I noticed a big uptic in speed on my lan at home and even outside the home. It plays much smoother. Are you running headless?  I have the ubuntu image you recommended but it loads a desktop. I would prefer to run headless.

Thanks and hopefully people realize how great the hardware is compared to RPI3 and start developing more and more for Pine64.

[tkaiser]

Are you running headless?  I have the ubuntu image you recommended but it loads a desktop. I would prefer to run headless.

Of course I'm running headless and the image I recommended is of course also headless. It's this here: http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=376

Don't use the crappy OS images from Pine64 wiki! This is what happens after an hour or so. A screensaver starts to eat up all your CPU, increases consumption and also temperatures that much that even throttling has to jump in and cooler state reaches/exceeds 4!! This is RPi-Monitor output made with the crappy Xubuntu OS image from Pine64 wiki. Starting at 13:40 the screensaver is taking over!



Also keep in mind that the screensaver heating up the SoC and utilising the CPU cores prevents Plex from being able to fully utilize the CPU. You should disable the lightdm service or better throw this crap in the bin and use the original OS image from longsleep!

Regarding 64 bit: I doubt this would help that much without special optimizations (NEON for example or maybe also being able to use HW accelerated video encoding). But I would suspect this will be available for RPi's VideoCore VPU earlier than for A64. We'll see and still the 'one USB 2.0 connection to the outside' limits every RPi to be used as media center.

[By-Jokese]

I'm going to try all this now. Going to install the OS, make some test and install plex server to see if works. Thx for all the info.

You said Wiki versions were wrong. https://www.pine64.com/downloads. Those?

[tkaiser]

You said Wiki versions were wrong. https://www.pine64.com/downloads. Those?

Yes, only manipulated crappy OS images listed. There are exactly two original images and you find them in "Linux development" subforum. They're small, headless but known to work. And in the same forum you'll find a script to add a Desktop Environment and also HW acceleration to the only original Ubuntu Xenial image available.

[By-Jokese]

Well my SD card seems to be broken. Can not write error. That's impossible to fix, so I will buy a new one tomorrow and test it out again.

EDIT: Worked!!!!! I have the Plex server installed. Now i have to move all my data from my previous server to the new one. Thank you guys.

[curiousgally]

Thanks tkaiser !!!

I got it working with the installation steps mentioned. I just testing it with my audio collections..pretty impressed so far with the performance. I couldn't use my videos as the pine in my case doesn't detect my USB 3 drives. I saw a thread regarding the same and will try it out once somebody fixes the issue.

[tkaiser]

Thanks tkaiser !!!

I got it working with the installation steps mentioned. I just testing it with my audio collections..pretty impressed so far with the performance. I couldn't use my videos as the pine in my case doesn't detect my USB 3 drives. I saw a thread regarding the same and will try it out once somebody fixes the issue.

Glad to hear that it worked (but please keep in mind that I simply relied on the well known instructions how to install Plex on various ARMv7 based boards and the only step missing was adding the necessary backwards compatibility by adding the armhf architecture, trying the stuff out and posting the few commands needed).

Regarding your USB drive: Hardware limitations (questionable power design) can not be fixed in software.

[swrtvrk]

echo "deb https://dev2day.de/pms/ jessie main" >/etc/apt/sources.list.d/pms.list
dpkg --add-architecture armhf
apt-get update

Then I get:

Skipping acquire of configured file 'main/binary-arm64/Packages' as repository 'https://dev2day.de/pms jessie InRelease' doesn't support architecture 'arm64'

Has anyone else received this error?