How to Install Plex on Centos 7 with NFS Mounts for Media

The first question you may ask is why on Linux?  Simply, the Linux install of Plex uses less memory resources than a standard Windows Installation in my experience.  With Windows I have also run into instances where the Plex Media Server fails to start on reboot.  With Linux I never experienced this, and it just continues to work without issues.

First step is to provision a Centos 7 VM.  I did this via a VM in my ESXi Environment.

Next we should update the system by executing

yum update

Then we go to the Plex website and download the latest RPM for Plex Media Server and download it via wget and install it.  If you used a minimal ISO Installation disk, you will need to install wget.

yum install wget

wget https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-media-server/1.5.5.3634-995f1dead/plexmediaserver-1.5.5.3634-995f1dead.x86_64.rpm

rpm -Uvh plexmediaserver-1.5.5.3634-995f1dead.x86_64.rpm

[root@plex ~]# rpm -Uvh plexmediaserver-1.5.5.3634-995f1dead.x86_64.rpm
warning: plexmediaserver-1.5.5.3634-995f1dead.x86_64.rpm: Header V4 RSA/SHA1 Signature, key ID 3adca79d: NOKEY
Preparing… ################################# [100%]
Updating / installing…
1:plexmediaserver-1.5.5.3634-995f1d################################# [100%]
Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/plexmediaserver.service to /usr/lib/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service.

Then we want to enable the Plex Media Server Service and set it to start on reboot

sudo systemctl enable plexmediaserver.service
sudo systemctl start plexmediaserver.service

Next we want to mount our media shares via NFS.  I currently have mine shared out via an UNRaid instance.  First we want to install the utilities used to mount shares for NFS.

yum install nfs-utils

Next we want to make the directories that will will mount the share to.

mkdir -p /mnt/Plex

Now we want to make sure all the related NFS Services are enabled and start on boot

systemctl enable rpcbind
systemctl enable nfs-server
systemctl enable nfs-lock
systemctl enable nfs-idmap
systemctl start rpcbind
systemctl start nfs-server
systemctl start nfs-lock
systemctl start nfs-idmap

Then we mount the share that we shared via NFS to the server

mount -t nfs 192.168.1.25:/mnt/user/PLEX /mnt/nfs/Plex/

Now we disable firewalld or put exceptions in so we can reach the Plex Web Interface.  I have chosen to disable firewalld.

systemctl stop firewalld

Then cd 0we browse to http://<YOURIP>:32400/web/index.html and configure the host.