Host your Plex media with rclone on cloud storage on Ubuntu Linux.
This project relies on:
- rclone 1.41+
- Plex Media Server
- Sonarr, Radarr, Usenet Client, Torrent Client (optional)
IMPORTANT: Plex must run as the SAME USER as the scripts. On Ubuntu, this is done by:
At the command line:
sudo service plexmediaserver stop
sudo chown -R myuser:myuser /var/lib/plexmediaserver
sudo systemctl edit plexmediaserver
This is the content to be placed in the editor
[Service]
User=myuser
Group=myuser
Then:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo service plexmediaserver start
clone the repo:
cd ~/
git clone https://github.com/trolley/SmokeScreen.git
Move the config file in to place
mkdir ~/.config/SmokeScreen
mv ~/SmokeScreen/smokescreen.conf ~/.config/SmokeScreen/smokescreen.conf
Move the scripts to ~/bin/:
mkdir ~/bin
mv ~/SmokeScreen/* ~/bin/
Make sure all the scripts are executable:
sudo chmod a+x ~/bin/*
The default configuration creates folders and mount points in your user's home directory. This may not be acceptable for your configuration, so change them to a more suitable location. All steps in this README refer to the $variable name and not the ~/path to avoid confusion.
Create a remote in rclone that points at the top level of your cloud storage, and make sure you create it so that it is writable. This remote will be the $primaryremote in the configuration. Then create another remote of type 'cache' that points at the first remote and the subfolder where your media is located, and configure the Plex settings for your server. This will be the $cacheremote configuration option.
If you need assistance creating remotes in rclone, visit their site.
The default configuration options are $primaryremote to be called GSUITE and $cacheremote to be called GSUITE-CACHE.
There is a checking script included that looks for a specific file on cloud storage. Set in the configuration as $checkfilename, when Cloud Storage is mounted you should see this file at $mediadir/$checkfilename. Use rclone to upload a file of this name to your cloud storage. Example:
touch ~/google-check
rclone move ~/google-check GSUITE:PlexMediaFolder
Now mount the system by running the check.mount script. You should see your Plex Media Folder from cloud storage mounted at $mediadir. If you don't, stop here and resolve it before continuing.
Plex can be configured however you choose for scanning, thumbnail generation, etc and will work the same as though all your media is on the local hard drive. Simply create your media libraries in Plex so that they point at the folders where your cloud storage is mounted.
Sonarr and Radarr should be configured to use TV and Movie folders in $mediadir as the root for all series/movies. Nothing special is required.
Media that these tools download will follow the path:
- Download client (SAB, Deluge, etc) downloads to temp directory
- Sonarr/Radarr "import" the file to the appropriate subfolders in
$mediadir - rclone handles moving the file to cloud storage automatically
If you are NOT using Sonarr or Radarr, manually add episodes and movies to your media folders. Be sure that media manually placed here follows Plex's media naming expectations.
CRON is used to automatically mount the drives.
Add the following to your user's crontab:
*/5 * * * * /home/USER/bin/check.mount >> /home/USER/logs/check.mount.log 2>&1
Cloud storage-hosted music doesn't work well with Plex. It takes forever to scan, and a long time to start streaming to devices. It works, but is outside the scope of this project.