Hi Guys,
Today I will show you how to easily move PLEX to the new server with all settings and user’s watched lists.
PLEX documentation tells us that we just need one file: Preferences.xml. This is not true. You also need the Plug-in Support folder where the database lives.
Let’s start it.
We need to do a backup of the old Server. On the old server please run:
sudo systemctl stop plexmediaserver.service
sudo tar -zcf /plex_preferences.tgz --absolute-names /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Preferences.xml
sudo tar -zcf /plex_pluginsupport.tgz --absolute-names /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Plug-in\ Support
Copy files to the new server. You can use SCP.
On the new server.
Install the PLEX server and copy your libraries to the new server. You can also shutdown old server and change the IP on the news server to the IP used on the old server. After that, we can start restoring our backup.
Stop PLEX server.
sudo systemctl stop plexmediaserver.service
Remove new files
sudo rm /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Preferences.xml
sudo systerm -rf /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Plug-in\ Support/
Unzip backup files.
sudo tar -xf plex_pluginsupport.tgz -C /home/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Plug-in\ Support
sudo tar -xf plex_preferences.tgz --absolute-names /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Preferences.xml
Start PLEX server.
sudo systemctl start plexmediaserver.service
Everything should work. I currently moved my PLEX server from Ubuntu to Debian.
PS. You may have refresh metadata for your plex libraries.
