Free Your Media: How to Build a Home Media Server Part 2 - Plex and other FreeNAS Plugins

[@aceofclubskid]

I cannot thank y'all enough for these videos. A few years ago I was considering a career change, and wanted to set up my own server to gain some experience. I converted my old gaming PC into a NAS, and it worked as a backup for storage, but I couldn't afford TB's of drives to make it a serious system. In the last month or so, I finally bought some 3x 3TB disks, set them up in raidz, bought a disk writer, and spent over two weeks copying all of my physical dvd's into a drive. As of this morning, I have officially set up my own Plex server which is being fed through my Truenas system! It's so exciting to have finally completed something I've been wanting to do for so long. I decided to do everything the squeaky-clean legal way, using all of my owned disks. Of course, there are alternatives but I did want to avoid any sort of trouble with my ISP or other headaches. It was a long process, frustrating at many points, but you guys helped show me the way. You guys have made me want to keep learning more and more about servers, hardware and generally being "in the know" about tech. I didn't end up changing career paths into IT, but now I know more about servers and technology than anyone else on my team. You helped me fill out my resume with useful skills and the confidence to answer more technical questions in my personal and professional life. I'm also now the proud owner of a Level1Techs mouse pad and "king of the hill" style mug. You guys rock, keep doing what you're doing!

[@kylerjohnson1934]

Seriously amazing. I NEED more of Ryan to talk condescendingly down to me. I don't believe I've ever laughed so hard at a NAS video before. I love how Wendell is just saying random things in the background! Krista is always awesome as usual too!

[@raulrodrigues9084]

"NextCloud we did it in the Linux channel! The Linux channel is amazing!!!" Yes, yes it is...

[@adrianwarner8686]

Most of this went over my head, yes I'm a "normie". But I try to be an educated one so I support L1T on Patreon and watch and learn. Feel free all to work out whether to hate me or like me.

[@omdtdz]

Dude you are not a normie, just you watching this and trying to learn something new sets you apart.

[@Trooper_Ish]

check out the forum... there may be lots that doesn't interest, but you may find the occasional nugget, and get some new info

[@1019wc1019]

normie to me now is "i built my own desktop but i dont do much more"

[@adrianwarner8686]

Trooper_Ish I've been a member on the forum for a long time. I dip in and out trying to learn new things.

[@Trooper_Ish]

Fair play, I just hadn't noticed the icon. Not that I post much myself :-)

[@Primusaur]

will this work with my new dyson?

[@davidg4512]

Primusaur Lmao

[@Gavinskey]

60fps confirmed

[@AugustusBohn0]

$700 well spent 😉🔫

[@origionalwinja]

yes

[@4.0.4]

Not loud enough to be a server.

[@johnterpack3940]

This seems like an excellent use for the quad-socket Supermicro board I have sitting on the shelf.

[@BillyDickson]

I’m running Windows 10 in a FreeNAS VM, connecting via my Mac, and a decent RDP client, works a treat. :-)

[@spacejaga]

Lvl1tech needs all our Engagement engagement engagement!

[@ishallbebuttercup]

There might need to be some clarification (fact checking?) in this video. I just set up my QNAP NAS with PLEX a few months ago and you can access your media from outside your local network for free without paying for a plex pass. All you need to do is set up port forwarding on your router or firewall. All plex pass does is allows you to back up your media to the cloud if your server is inaccessible for some reason. It also allows you to download your media straight to a device for offline watching.

[@DrRandomacts]

Yeah they are wrong on so many ways with plex and emby. I have used both and at this point I like Plex more and I have lifetime passes for both anyways so I hopefully am not biased

[@mousejjt2]

What ports do i use to port foward plex outside

[@timothykealy6054]

I love Plex, been running it for years now with no issues.

[@GifCoDigital]

Love it! Please do this every time someone asks you to reexplain something thats overly simple!

[@mentalreactor]

I can't install Flex on my Brand New Dyson 30 000, pleas help!

[@Mr.Unacceptable]

Engagement! I already have a 16Tb NAS. My problem with Plex is them knowing what I keep on my NAS. It's all boring stuff movies and TV I've ripped from my DVD collection but they shouldn't have the right or means to know what is on my PC. Same as an operating system company. Microsoft. They spend more on how to spy than creating a functioning operating system.

[@pelahale]

Do you still need to worry about Spectre attacks on a computer you're using as server - i.e. how unsafe is it to use an old computer with i7-920 cpu as a home server computer?

[@4mon05]

Wendell's cameo was a surprise lmao

[@Y3ll0wSoda]

lol love how the hard drives are just haphazardly stacked on top of each other xD

[@simonchambers2852]

thanks guys for the help. just built a freenas after using a netgear readynas for years . For my media I use MiniDLNA with FreeNAS 11 bit of stuffing around to install and configure but there is a great tutorial on freeNAS forum, just search for "How to install MiniDLNA into a FreeNAS 9.3, 9.10.x., or FreeNAS 11" it has no web GUI so sort your files and directorys your self and point it at them.

[@islas192]

I'm a simple man, I see Weird Al, I upvote

[@briancomey7533]

My mind will not stop playing Pork and Beans. Other than that, this looked like a simple tutorial but the stacked set of hardrives in the case did make me feel normal.

[@sonictor]

These two videos about building your own NAS have been really nice, just what I've been looking for so first of all thanks for that! I'm thinking about getting one and trying to decide between building my own or buying something like a Synology enclosure. It's only for home use, not looking for anything overkill. I work with server hardware so I don't mind building my own, price looks somewhat similar between the two options so I'm trying to look at as many pros and cons with either solution, including what else the system can be used for. As you mentioned at the end of this video, I'd love to see how it handles running VMs and what other use you could get out of it.

[@MRGilD0]

I got a plex ad before this vid lol.

[@TobyCowles]

Sir Gildo same

[@johncnorris]

Same same.

[@deovi1653]

Thank you so much! Just saw these two episodes and I already got something to do for this long weekend! ^_^

[@animationcreations42]

I completely forgot it was called Tidepod. Nearly died

[@chrismallia29]

How iz ZFS on linux now? I am going for ubuntu server with ZFS or freenas have a test machine running, but I do not know if zfs is good on linux like is on BSD

[@cmusic52]

Shoot, I think nowadays the paywalled features of plex is just the DVR functionality of the tv streaming, most everything else is free, the Android app may cost u a couple dollars but it really has a great client side UI for most devices

[@0xredsec]

Yo. You guys rock.

[@Trooper_Ish]

Weird AL is love.... Weird AL is life....

[@chadroffall6478]

I'd like to see something about running virtual machines on FreeNAS for sure. That feature wasn't available when I switched over to unRAID but I'm considering the switch back now that it's an option since the disk performance would be higher on the FreeNAS setup. In the age of SSDs everywhere, the performance of a single spinning disk feels agonizingly slow when I'm copying data around.

[@positivemelon7578]

This is a great series. Right now I manually download torrents and have a samba share & dlna server for playback. I would love to do that more efficiently!

[@14draven]

What do you think about openmediavault ??

[@janissteninbergs7817]

I like how the HDD's are just stacked on each other at 10:00

[@L0rDLuCk]

Thanks for the follow up! I recently build my own FreeNAS box and wondering why there is no HDD-Temp-graph under the reporting tab. Every consumer plug and play NAS lets you know the HDD-Temps but FreeNAS doesn't. I dont understand why. Can you please help?

[@tee_es_bee]

I would enjoy more content of a similar nature. =)

[@rdsii64]

I love your set up. My only issue is backing up my content. I use backblaze and it backs my whole media server for $6.00 a month. Backing up a freenass box cost way more than I can afford.

[@jthompson120db]

thanks, made very simple, Im really not to fluent in these things myself so this is new stuff for me as well as maybe some of your viewers

[@amessman]

I looked up NZB... I am confused... why’s it bad?

[@pahtriac]

could you please make a update freenas is changed i cant make head nor tails from the current interface

[@Screaming-Trees]

Hardware transcoding is one notable feature missing with the free version of Plex. It's one of those features that's well worth paying for as it does help with transcoding (and you will run into situations where you'll have to transcode). I can't think of any other feature worth paying for though.

[@omegaflameZ]

If anyone is looking to drop dropbox, I wholeheartedly recommend syncthing. Bloody great (and dead easy to get stuff onto Android devices with a single command).

[@Shinta0SaINt]

Yes, we are interested in the virtual machine follow up guys! Everyone on KZbin is freenas this plex that, but they rarely get into other stuff like virtual machines, pfsens etc, please teach us level 1, regards Shane from Trinidad

[@alexmouris2]

I don't even w8 to check the video. i immediately like and at the end of the video i know i did the right thing :) keep up the good work!

[@MagikEh]

Would absolutely love a bit more about VMs on freenas. Last time I tried to setup an Ubuntu vm with vnc for remote desktop.. Well it didn't work out at all. That coupled with the switch to docker then switching back to FN9 ui really jaded me. These videos are making me want to give it another go :D

[@kbrnsr]

The NZB part made me lulz in RL.

[@KanokYT]

Weird Al fan? Instant like! Oh, um, the video is great too.

[@cuteraptor42]

What if we have an openvpn server set up on our freenas? We get the convenience to get our media outside our home? That's crazy!

[@spud4242]

freeNAS and VM's?? yes please

[@MikaelKKarlsson]

It Came From The Basement : Part Two.

[@meza3214]

Yes, do more with virtualization!

[@RighteousBruce]

Considering doing this on my 4770k spare rig. I miss SabNZB

[@KubrickFR]

Emby has the same exact business model as plex. The only difference is that emby is free as in freedom.

[@cdoublejj]

Emby UNLIKE plex doesn't cut off access to your media when your server looses contact with home/dev/maker servers. plex users are getting pissed it's happened twice already, during some outages that killed connections to the plex system inc servers. you can't login with out a patch/hack and giving ALL users access to ALL movies. hope little johhny doesn't click on sling blade. also Emby can sometimes handle more external streams on the given hardware than plex, as per the byte my bits video.

[@KubrickFR]

Interesting, I wasn't aware of that.

[@AugustusBohn0]

Mathieu LANCE thanks for the tip, I was planning on avoiding plex because of that.

[@comrad707]

You can add in Server settings which IPs in your network can connect without signing in to bypass this. Emby doing more with the hardware sounds interesting though and something I'd like to try.

[@IntrepidTechie]

Random Wendell made me LOL

[@rrodriguesv2]

Hello thanks for the video, i am looking forward to build a 6 hd ironwolf (raid 5)+ 2 ssd for cahshing to a home NAS, which one is the best , fastest and more reliable, a zdfs /freenas (regular computer) system with regular sata conections or a LSI-9361-8i sas/sata 12gb (MTBF 1,343,187 hours) with cashcaid ? , thanks

[@HOLLOWKILLER514]

I envy Grizzle's ability to play it straight.

[@Themightynoob01]

I cant' get this to work. On freenas 11.2 When in Plex UI, I try to add a library and it just shows me "Cache" "Codecs" "Logs" "Plug-in support" "Plug-ins". I'm not seeing my "ZMedia" dataset. Plex jail Source: /mnt/All_The_Storage/1Media destination: /mnt/iocage/jails/plexmedia/root/ZMedia

[@tylertuthill5121]

What is the advantage of using Freenas over something like Ubuntu/Ubuntu Server ?

[@iMadrid11]

FreeNAS is lightweight and more simple to setup than a full blown server operating system. Think of FreeNAS as an appliance whose main job is to provide network file storage. The plugins are options that provide extra functionality. Like Plex as a media server library. If you don’t need all the features and complexity of setting up and maintaining a full server OS. FreeNAS is a good option.

[@SynrsCreed]

What kind of top is on that table? I'm building a new desk and that looks great.

[@wheresmyspanner]

Could you cover setting up the ownCloud plug in? I've been fascinated by setting up cloud access on my own hardware but have always been too worried about security to private documents public facing.

[@EmBoLabe]

just bought a Seagate barracuda pro 6Tb and thinking of getting the 10Tb aswell in the future. And the latest Samsung Smart tv's have plex preinstalled with a license. and steam link.

[@todddembsky8321]

Wow, Christa is looking exceptional nice in that outfit today. She needs to do a video on how to look good with an I-Fixit tool set in your front pocket.

[@BobPegram]

And what did I get out of this tutorial? Nice dress Krista! 8-))

[@patrickbentley4038]

I have a unRAID and a freenas system with all my media. You should also talk more about next cloud setup in free as. As far as media is concerned I would of just used a You tube clip of your content but keep these videos coming

[@noenken]

I've tried freenas a couple times now and honestly ... I don't like it. I think I'll switch to debian or so and set up ZFS by hand. The web UI of freenas is just terrible and I don't need 99% of what it can do.

[@melaniessymposiumofadnauseum]

This.

[@zucciniknife]

Permissions are also a hot mess if you're trying to do a multi-user CIFS share with different permissions.

[@danielchambers9334]

github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Debian

[@ewenchan1239]

I will never, EVER, EVER, EVER use ZFS on a production server WITHOUT LTO backups. EVER. Even in the video where Wendall compares ZFS with Btrfs, even he says that with both FSes, you need to have backups. When you only have a few TBs, that's not so bad. But I'm up to about 100 TB, so for me, I have to move to LTO which is EXPENSIVE!!! ZFS has failed TWICE on me and so I have banned it from my house.

[@johnnybegood8049]

@@ewenchan1239 Using ECC memory?! What happened?

[@thefinder8087]

So what's the pros to this as opposed to just using VLC on Android or iPhone to stream media from your desktop/laptop?

[@Gamescommentary]

Ryan was very Norm MacDonald in this video. Hm..

[@donbeckham]

I love your sarcasm! LOL especially @ 5:00

[@noctemrealm6013]

YO!! CONGRATS ON THE 200K!!!!!

[@johngeist4704]

I would love a guide on virtual machines!!

[@zfenty]

where is a link for the LINUX CHANNEL?

[@delta9k]

Interested in seeing VM's with FreeNAS as eluded to, in this part2.

[@vgamesx1]

I tried Emby a couple of times a year ago and both times it would freeze my computer at 99% CPU usage when all I did at that point was tell it where my media was located, it wasn't a very fun experience...

[@layol692k7]

def want to see more on running virtual machines

[@JayBzy97]

I'd love to see more about running Dockers in a VM in FreeNAS

[@bulcub]

Hmm what happened to ZFS? in the first video you were chirping about using ZFS and no controller card and now you used FreeNas?

[@RetroTinkerer]

Wooov nice to learn about this... I will check what kind of system I can use, I know, not the very old ones, but maybe an athlon x2 5200 with 8GB of RAM. 😊

[@cfisupply]

Hate on Plex? I love Plex. Though... I will say I wish they stayed more open source/free software, but, they are a great media server/player solution.

[@wreckervilla]

I'm particularly interested in VMs on freenas, I will await your next video here, on this stump.

[@Danny-pp8xz]

hows the wattage kinda important for a media server?

[@disabledcable685]

Ty for this basic overview of plex,I love it and thought it was universally praised but wtf do I know? If yall wanna go into depth on topic of vms that would be fantastic and something very few channels have the credibility and talent to pull off.

[@ericherrero3212]

Another great vid. Keep it up 🤠

[@Pienimusta]

I can download automaticaly "new research material" to my NAS? Niiiccee...

[@deathcometh61]

Are the plugin stable? I've been reading that they have been having issues.

[@matteldridge5581]

great video. i already use plex but would love to see how to setup VM's with free nas. keep up the great work

Now I am torn between freenas and Ubuntu server. For home, media, storage, git and build server. 6 core xeon with 24gb ecc won't be powerfull enough to run Jenkins inside vm and be reasonably fast compiling multiple projects of kernel, fpga and some embedded stuff and at the same time encoding couple of streams. I think that withouth additional overhead of VM ubuntu might make it...

[@shortymtb]

Done the freenas thing b4 but not the virtual machine side, I would be interested in a video on that

[@darkphotographer]

dose free nas suport smb 3 multi channel . like windows ,, so i can use multiple nic , and faster speed point to point ,

[@gravypod]

Can you repost this on dtube? The quality of the news was much better there.

[@Lacknerr]

Uh! NZB... I understand ;) BTW A Freenas / Rancher Video would be nice!

[@kaceyhowell6570]

Found an error in the video. At 9:45 he insinuates that the remote access part of Plex is part of Plex Pass. This is incorrect. Remote access on Plex works just fine without using Plex Pass. I have been for the last two years just fine. To repeat, Remote access is *not* part of Plex Pass. If you want to watch on your phone or tablet, you do have to buy the pro version of the app.

[@saccaed]

Just learned of the linux channel. Might think of throwing a link to it in the notes for your videos.

[@tomaxxamot2016]

Wouldn't want this guy as my teacher, where is Wendell?

[@Panhead49EL]

Calls channel Level 1 Techs.....tells you something is really basic and to figure it out for yourself. lol

[@railerswim]

I like plex, screw the haters

[@islo6865]

We are MOST engaged.

[@stevenkewlkid]

Wait I'm stuck on the first part. I click on the darker blue line?

[@Impulse_Photography]

When you say you are accessing via a client, do you mean the server is plugged into the router, and the client is accessing it via the router ?? I'm not so sure I understand this part to well ... ..

[@williamp6800]

Yes

[@kieran1484]

two kristas = 1 grizzle, quick math facts

[@LethalBB]

Ryan sounds quite distant, was his mic dead?

[@vidneypopples]

remote access is included in plex for free!

[@johndoe86x2]

I'd actually really like to see Docker containers with FreeNAS instead of whole VM's.

[@spacejaga]

Engagement engagement engagement! Come on ppl!