With our easy-to-install Plex Media Server software and your Plex apps, available on all your favorite phones, tablets, streaming devices, gaming consoles, and smart TVs, you can stream your video, music, and photo collections any time, anywhere, to any device.
Before you create your container, you must decide on the type of networking you wish to use. There are essentially three types of networking available:
-`bridge` (default)
-`host`
-`macvlan`
The `bridge` networking creates an entirely new network within the host and runs containers within there. This network is connected to the physical network via an internal router and docker configures this router to forward certain ports through to the containers within. The `host` networking uses the IP address of the host running docker such that a container's networking appears to be the host rather than separate. The `macvlan` networking creates a new virtual computer on the network which is the container. For purposes of setting up a plex container, the `host` and `macvlan` are very similar in configuration.
Using `host` or `macvlan` is the easier of the three setups and has the fewest issues that need to be worked around. However, some setups may be restricted to only running in the `bridge` mode. Plex can be made to work in this mode, but it is more complicated.
For those who use docker-compose, this repository provides the necessary YML template files to be modified for your own use.
Similar to `Host Networking` above with these changes:
- The network has been changed to `physical` which is the name of the `macvlan` network (yours is likely to be different).
- The `--ip` parameter has been added to specify the IP address of the container. This parameter is optional since the network may specify IPs to use but this paramater overrides those settings.
- The `-h <HOSTNAME>` has been added since this networking type doesn't use the hostname of the host.
Note: In this configuration, you must do some additional configuration:
- If you wish your Plex Media Server to be accessible outside of your home network, you must manually setup port forwarding on your router to forward to the `ADVERTISE_IP` specified above. By default you can forward port 32400, but if you choose to use a different external port, be sure you configure this in Plex Media Server's `Remote Access` settings. With this type of docker networking, the Plex Media Server is essentially behind two routers and it cannot automatically setup port forwarding on its own.
- (Plex Pass only) After the server has been set up, you should configure the `LAN Networks` preference to contain the network of your LAN. This instructs the Plex Media Server to treat these IP addresses as part of your LAN when applying bandwidth controls. The syntax is the same as the `ALLOWED_NETWORKS` below. For example `192.168.1.0/24,172.16.0.0/16` will allow access to the entire `192.168.1.x` range and the `172.16.x.x` range.
-`-p 32400:32400/tcp` Forwards port 32400 from the host to the container. This is the primary port that Plex uses for communication and is required for Plex Media Server to operate.
-`-p …` Forwards complete set of other ports used by Plex to the container. For a full explanation of which you may need, please see the help article: [https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201543147-What-network-ports-do-I-need-to-allow-through-my-firewall](https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201543147-What-network-ports-do-I-need-to-allow-through-my-firewall)
-`-v <path/to/plex/database>:/config` The path where you wish Plex Media Server to store its configuration data. This database can grow to be quite large depending on the size of your media collection. This is usually a few GB but for large libraries or libraries where index files are generated, this can easily hit the 100s of GBs. If you have an existing database directory see the section below on the directory setup. (Note that the underlying filesystem needs to support file locking. Known to not be default enabled on remote filesystems like NFS)
-`-v <path/to/transcode/temp>:/transcode` The path where you would like Plex Media Server to store its transcoder temp files. If not provided, the storage space within the container will be used. Expect sizes in the 10s of GB.
-`-v <path/to/media>:/data` This is provided as examples for providing media into the container. The exact structure of how the media is organized and presented inside the container is a matter of user preference. You can use as many or as few of these parameters as required to provide your media to the container.
The following are the recommended parameters. Each of the following parameters to the container are treated as first-run parameters only. That is, all other paraters are ignored on subsequent runs of the server. We recommend that you set the following parameters:
- **HOSTNAME** Sets the hostname inside the docker container. For example `-h PlexServer` will set the servername to `PlexServer`. Not needed in Host Networking.
- **TZ** Set the timezone inside the container. For example: `Europe/London`. The complete list can be found here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones)
- **PLEX_CLAIM** The claim token for the server to obtain a real server token. If not provided, server is will not be automatically logged in. If server is already logged in, this parameter is ignored. You can obtain a claim token to login your server to your plex account by visiting [https://www.plex.tv/claim](https://www.plex.tv/claim)
- **ADVERTISE_IP** This variable defines the additional IPs on which the server may be be found. For example: `http://10.1.1.23:32400`. This adds to the list where the server advertises that it can be found. This is only needed in Bridge Networking.
These parameters are usually not required but some special setups may benefit from their use. As in the previous section, each is treated as first-run parameters only:
- **PLEX_UID** The user id of the `plex` user created inside the container.
- **PLEX_GID** The group id of the `plex` group created inside the container
- **CHANGE_CONFIG_DIR_OWNERSHIP** Change ownership of config directory to the plex user. Defaults to `true`. If you are certain permissions are already set such that the `plex` user within the container can read/write data in it's config directory, you can set this to `false` to speed up the first run of the container.
- **ALLOWED_NETWORKS** IP/netmask entries which allow access to the server without requiring authorization. We recommend you set this only if you do not sign in your server. For example `192.168.1.0/24,172.16.0.0/16` will allow access to the entire `192.168.1.x` range and the `172.16.x.x` range. Note: If you are using Bridge networking, then localhost will appear to plex as coming from the docker networking gateway which is often `172.16.0.1`.
Permissions of mounted media outside the container do apply to the Plex Media Server running within the container. As stated above, the Plex Media Server runs as a specially created `plex` user within the container. This user may not exist outside the container and so the `PLEX_UID` and `PLEX_GID` parameters are used to set the user id and group id of this user within the container. If you wish for the Plex Media Server to run under the same permissions as your own user, execute the following to find out these ids:
In addition to the standard version and `latest` tags, two other tags exist: `plexpass` and `public`. These two images behave differently than your typical containers. These two images do **not** have any Plex Media Server binary installed. Instead, when these containers are run, they will perform an update check and fetch the latest version, install it, and then continue execution. They also run the update check whenever the container is restarted. To update the version in the container, simply stop the container and start container again when you have a network connection. The startup script will automatically fetch the appropriate version and install it before starting the Plex Media Server.
The `public` restricts this check to public versions only where as `plexpass` will fetch Plex Pass versions. If the server is not logged in or you do not have Plex Pass on your account, the `plexpass` tagged images will be restricted to publicly available versions only.
- Locate the current config directory as directed here: [https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/202915258-Where-is-the-Plex-Media-Server-data-directory-located-](https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/202915258-Where-is-the-Plex-Media-Server-data-directory-located-)
- If the config dir is stored in a location such as `/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/`, the config dir will be `/var/lib/plexmediaserver`.
- If the config dir does not contain `Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/` or the directory containing `Library` has data unrelated to Plex, such as OS X, then you should:
- Create a new directory which will be your new config dir.
- Within that config dir, create the directories `Library/Application Support`
- Copy `Plex Media Server` into that `Library/Application Support`
- Note: by default Plex will claim ownership of the entire contents of the `config` dir (see CHANGE_CONFIG_DIR_OWNERSHIP for more information). As such, there should be nothing in that dir that you do not wish for Plex to own.
If you get the following output after you have started the container, then this is due to a patched version of Docker ([#158](https://github.com/just-containers/s6-overlay/issues/158#issuecomment-266913426))
