How To Setup A Headless Media Server Using Ubuntu 14.04 and Plex Software

Part 1: Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS Installation

For the first part, we install Ubuntu 14.04 as our base-OS. Below are the necessary procedures.

• Step 1: Power on your machine and set your BIOS settings to boot from CD/DVD.
• Step 2: After doing so, insert your Ubuntu DVD installer and boot from it. When your machine successfully booted up, you’ll be prompted with a menu, similar to the image shown below. Select your desired language using your keyboard’s arrow keys. Navigate and highlight your language and then press enter to activate it. In my case, I choose English.
• Step 3: Remember that we’re setting a headless setup of Ubuntu, so we’ll setup just the core files, plus OpenSSH server. So just choose Install Ubuntu Server by highlighting it with your arrow keys, and press enter. That should take you to the next step.
• Step 4. At this point, you must choose your location. It is recommended to choose your real geographic location because Ubuntu will choose the most optimal mirror server for your current location. So if you choose United States, Ubuntu shall configure the apt sources list to pick the most optimal servers that are located in the U.S. So in my case I’d choose Philippines.
• Step 5. The next prompt will ask you if you want your keyboard be detected properly by the installer. If you have chosen a different language other than English from the previous steps, and you have a different keyboard layout other than the QWERTY layout, I suggest that you choose Yes here. You should use TAB key to select a choice from this menu. If you select YES, then you will be ask to press a series of keys. The installer will detect your keyboard layout properly depending on what keys you’ve pressed. In my case, I would choose No.
  Now, depending on your answer, if you choose NO (like I did) the installer will ask you again if what is the Country Origin of your keyboard, In my case, I should choose English US and hit enter and the installation should start. But if you choose YES to let the installer detect your keyboard, it will not ask you to select your keyboard’s Country of origin, instead it will start the installation process.
• Step 6. After the above step, depending again on your setup, the installer will ask you to configure your network manually if it didn’t acquire a dynamic IP address. But if you have configured a DHCP server inside your network, and the installer automatically acquires an IP address, no prompt will pop-up. In case you need to configure your network manually, then you should follow the following steps.
  • 6.1: Select and activate Configure network manually.
  • 6.2: Then the installer will prompt you to input your desired IP address. Enter your IP address, it should have the same subnet as your existing network. In my case, I have a subnet of 192.168.1.xxx, so I would input my IP like so, 192.168.1.99. Then hit enter to continue with the next step. Use TAB key to select CONTINUE.
  • Step 6.3: Enter a subnet mask, in my case, 255.255.255.0.
  • Step 6.4: Enter your gateway IP address, this should be your router’s IP address. In my case, 192.168.1.1.
  • Step 6.5: Enter you name server address, this should also be your router’s IP address. In my case, 192.168.1.1.
  • Step 6.6: Select and activate Continue button. You should be taken to the next step. You’re done with the manual network configuration.
• Step 7: You’ll be prompted to enter your desired host name with this step, so enter your host name. This will be the name of your box/machine that you could identify from your local network. You may name it like, ubuntu-headless or any name you can think of. It could be planet names or celebrities. In my case, I’ll name it ubuntu-plex.
• Step 8: The next step will ask you for your domain name. But since this host will only be used inside the local network, we could just make something up. So in my case, I would name it chubbable.loc. Now we have configured our domain name. And when a domain name is attached to a host name, it makes the host name a fully qualified domain name. But this setup is just for local network. You don’t really have to register a domain name. In my case, my fully qualified domain name for my setup would be ubuntu-plex.chubbable.loc.
• Step 9: Next, enter your name, your desired username and password.
• Step 10: The installer will ask you if you want your home directory encrypted, since this is just a basic and simple setup, we may choose No to not encrypt home directory.
• Step 11: Choose your time zone. If you want to choose another time zone, then you should choose NO when asked if Is this time zone correct? In my case, it automatically selects my desired time zone, which is Asia/Manila, so I’d answer Yes.

  • Note: The installer can only select your Country automatically when your machine is connected to the Internet. It selects your Country based on your detected public IP address.

• Step 12: Choose a partitioning method. By default, Guided - use entire disk and setup LVM option is selected. I recommend to just implement it and hit enter to start partitioning. Select your hard disk and press enter to continue. In my case, I have a 80GB Sata hard disk. When asked to Write changes to disk and configure LVM, answer Yes. Another prompt will ask you, Write the changes to disk?, answer Yes and the partitioning process should start. After this process, a prompt will ask you to configure a HTTP proxy, you may skip this by hitting Continue button and proceed with the installation.
• Step 13: After the previous step the install process should start, you can sit back and relax while the installer applies your settings. During this process, another prompt will pop-up asking you how you would manage upgrades on your system. You should choose Install security updates automatically. Another prompt will ask you if what software to install. Since this is going to be an Ubuntu headless setup, you would select OpenSSH Server package, and you may select Samba file server as well (you can use this service later on with your media file management). To select a package, use arrow keys and space-bar to activate it and hit Continue button to continue. In the final part of this process, another prompt will ask you if you wanted to install GRUB bootloader to the master boot record. You should answer Yes to continue. That would be it, hit Continue once more to finalize the install process. Your machine should reboot and should take you to a black-screen login prompt. Congratulations! You have now installed a GUI-less Ubuntu 14.04. You may now continue with the next phase of the server setup.

• Step 1: Fire-up your browser and head over to plex.tv/downloads. Then click COMPUTER button, a pop-up window should open.
• Step 2: Click Linux tab and scroll further below, right-click on 64-BIT button just below the Ubuntu text and select Copy link location. Minimize the window and switch-back to your Putty session.

• Step 3: Type-in wget and then space. Then paste what you have just copied (copy link location) in the Putty.exe window. To do this, just right-click on it to paste, then hit enter. It should download the latest version of Plex software. Wait for it to finish then proceed to the next step.

• Step 4: After downloading the file, install it by using the following command: sudo dpkg -i plexmediaserver_0.9.9.12.504-3e7f93c_amd64.deb and hit enter. You’ll be prompted to enter your password, enter your password and hit enter.

Note: When you type your secret-pass, your screen won’t print it.

Installation should start when you typed-in your pass-phrase correctly.

TIP: Noticed that the Plex software installer has a very long file name, to help you out a little bit, you may do the following: Type sudo dpkg -i then space, then type plex, and then hit Tab key. It should auto-completes the file-name.

• Step 5: If you encountered an error during install process, do this: type sudo apt-get install -f and hit enter. When ask if you want to continue, answer y and hit enter. Installation should resume.
• Step 6: After the above installation step, we now test the server and see if Plex was installed properly. So let’s do that now and fire-up a browser. To access Plex’s web-based control panel, you would type-in your server’s IP address plus port number, then directory name manage The format is like this:

  ip-address:port-number/manage
  
  

  So you would type like this in your browser’s address bar:

  192.168.1.99:32400/manage
  
  

  Substitute 192.168.1.99 with your machine’s IP address. Port Number 32400 is Plex’s default port it listens to, for web administration.

  If you see a web-page similar to the image below, then you have setup Plex media server correctly. Now click

  Agree button to accept the software terms of service. At this point, you can now configure and administer your server remotely from any machine within your local network. You’ll be using a lot of command-line syntaxes when you configure your Linux server and when you add or install additional modules/packages to it.

Part 2 – B: Installation procedures for Ubuntu-based Platform:

Installing Plex Media Server from an Ubuntu-based OS (Ubuntu Deskop or Linux Mint) is very similar to the steps we’ve taken previously. The only difference is, we don’t need to download

Putty.exe or similar software. We only need to open a terminal and type in… ssh [email protected]. A window will pop-up asking you if you wanted to continue, just type yes and hit enter. You could now move on and follow the procedures from “To Install Plex Using SSH In Windows” above. Sample Screen From LinuxMint Command Prompt:

Tip: You could copy-paste an applicable command to a command-line. To paste a copied text or snippet to a Linux terminal, click middle mouse button.