linuxserver/plex¶

Plex organizes video, music and photos from personal media libraries and streams them to smart TVs, streaming boxes and mobile devices. This container is packaged as a standalone Plex Media Server. Straightforward design and bulk actions mean getting things done faster.

Supported Architectures¶

We utilise the docker manifest for multi-platform awareness. More information is available from docker here and our announcement here.

Simply pulling lscr.io/linuxserver/plex:latest should retrieve the correct image for your arch, but you can also pull specific arch images via tags.

The architectures supported by this image are:

Application Setup¶

Webui can be found at <your-ip>:32400/web

Valid settings for VERSION are:-

• docker: Let Docker handle the Plex Version, we keep our Dockerhub Endpoint up to date with the latest public builds. This is the same as leaving this setting out of your create command.
• latest: will update plex to the latest version available that you are entitled to.
• public: will update plexpass users to the latest public version, useful for plexpass users that don't want to be on the bleeding edge but still want the latest public updates.
• <specific-version>: will select a specific version (eg 0.9.12.4.1192-9a47d21) of plex to install, note you cannot use this to access plexpass versions if you do not have plexpass.

Read-Only Operation¶

This image can be run with a read-only container filesystem. For details please read the docs.

Caveats¶

• Runtime update of Plex (and thus Plexpass builds) is not supported.
• Transcode directory must be mounted to a host path or tmpfs.

Hardware Acceleration¶

Many desktop applications need access to a GPU to function properly and even some Desktop Environments have compositor effects that will not function without a GPU. However this is not a hard requirement and all base images will function without a video device mounted into the container.

Intel/ATI/AMD¶

To leverage hardware acceleration you will need to mount /dev/dri video device inside of the container.

--device=/dev/dri:/dev/dri

We will automatically ensure the abc user inside of the container has the proper permissions to access this device.

Nvidia¶

Hardware acceleration users for Nvidia will need to install the container runtime provided by Nvidia on their host, instructions can be found here: https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvidia-container-toolkit

We automatically add the necessary environment variable that will utilise all the features available on a GPU on the host. Once nvidia-container-toolkit is installed on your host you will need to re/create the docker container with the nvidia container runtime --runtime=nvidia and add an environment variable -e NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all (can also be set to a specific gpu's UUID, this can be discovered by running nvidia-smi --query-gpu=gpu_name,gpu_uuid --format=csv ). NVIDIA automatically mounts the GPU and drivers from your host into the container.

Arm Devices¶

Best effort is made to install tools to allow mounting in /dev/dri on Arm devices. In most cases if /dev/dri exists on the host it should just work. If running a Raspberry Pi 4 be sure to enable dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d in your usercfg.txt.

Usage¶

To help you get started creating a container from this image you can either use docker-compose or the docker cli.

docker-compose (recommended, click here for more info)¶

---
services:
  plex:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/plex:latest
    container_name: plex
    network_mode: host
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
      - VERSION=docker
      - PLEX_CLAIM= #optional
    volumes:
      - /path/to/plex/library:/config
      - /path/to/tvseries:/tv
      - /path/to/movies:/movies
    restart: unless-stopped

docker cli (click here for more info)¶

docker run -d \
  --name=plex \
  --net=host \
  -e PUID=1000 \
  -e PGID=1000 \
  -e TZ=Etc/UTC \
  -e VERSION=docker \
  -e PLEX_CLAIM= `#optional` \
  -v /path/to/plex/library:/config \
  -v /path/to/tvseries:/tv \
  -v /path/to/movies:/movies \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  lscr.io/linuxserver/plex:latest

Parameters¶

Containers are configured using parameters passed at runtime (such as those above). These parameters are separated by a colon and indicate <external>:<internal> respectively. For example, -p 8080:80 would expose port 80 from inside the container to be accessible from the host's IP on port 8080 outside the container.

Ports (-p)¶

Networking (--net)¶

Environment Variables (-e)¶

Volume Mappings (-v)¶

Miscellaneous Options¶

Environment variables from files (Docker secrets)¶

You can set any environment variable from a file by using a special prepend FILE__.

As an example:

-e FILE__MYVAR=/run/secrets/mysecretvariable

Will set the environment variable MYVAR based on the contents of the /run/secrets/mysecretvariable file.

Umask for running applications¶

For all of our images we provide the ability to override the default umask settings for services started within the containers using the optional -e UMASK=022 setting. Keep in mind umask is not chmod it subtracts from permissions based on it's value it does not add. Please read up here before asking for support.

Optional Parameters¶

If you want to run the container in bridge network mode (instead of the recommended host network mode) you will need to specify ports. The official documentation for ports lists 32400 as the only required port. The rest of the ports are optionally used for specific purposes listed in the documentation. If you have not already claimed your server (first time setup) you need to set PLEX_CLAIM to claim a server set up with bridge networking.

  -p 32400:32400 \
  -p 1900:1900/udp \
  -p 5353:5353/udp \
  -p 8324:8324 \
  -p 32410:32410/udp \
  -p 32412:32412/udp \
  -p 32413:32413/udp \
  -p 32414:32414/udp \
  -p 32469:32469

The application accepts a series of environment variables to further customize itself on boot:

User / Group Identifiers¶

When using volumes (-v flags), permissions issues can arise between the host OS and the container, we avoid this issue by allowing you to specify the user PUID and group PGID.

Ensure any volume directories on the host are owned by the same user you specify and any permissions issues will vanish like magic.

In this instance PUID=1000 and PGID=1000, to find yours use id your_user as below:

id your_user

Example output:

uid=1000(your_user) gid=1000(your_user) groups=1000(your_user)

Docker Mods¶

We publish various Docker Mods to enable additional functionality within the containers. The list of Mods available for this image (if any) as well as universal mods that can be applied to any one of our images can be accessed via the dynamic badges above.

Support Info¶

• Shell access whilst the container is running:

  docker exec -it plex /bin/bash
  

• To monitor the logs of the container in realtime:

  docker logs -f plex
  

• Container version number:

  docker inspect -f '{{ index .Config.Labels "build_version" }}' plex
  

• Image version number:

  docker inspect -f '{{ index .Config.Labels "build_version" }}' lscr.io/linuxserver/plex:latest
  

Updating Info¶

Most of our images are static, versioned, and require an image update and container recreation to update the app inside. With some exceptions (noted in the relevant readme.md), we do not recommend or support updating apps inside the container. Please consult the Application Setup section above to see if it is recommended for the image.

Below are the instructions for updating containers:

Via Docker Compose¶

• Update images:

  • All images:

    docker-compose pull
    

  • Single image:

    docker-compose pull plex
    

• Update containers:

  • All containers:

    docker-compose up -d
    

  • Single container:

    docker-compose up -d plex
    

• You can also remove the old dangling images:

  docker image prune
  

Via Docker Run¶

• Update the image:

  docker pull lscr.io/linuxserver/plex:latest
  

• Stop the running container:

  docker stop plex
  

• Delete the container:

  docker rm plex
  

• Recreate a new container with the same docker run parameters as instructed above (if mapped correctly to a host folder, your /config folder and settings will be preserved)

• You can also remove the old dangling images:

  docker image prune
  

Image Update Notifications - Diun (Docker Image Update Notifier)¶

Building locally¶

If you want to make local modifications to these images for development purposes or just to customize the logic:

git clone https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-plex.git
cd docker-plex
docker build \
  --no-cache \
  --pull \
  -t lscr.io/linuxserver/plex:latest .

The ARM variants can be built on x86_64 hardware and vice versa using lscr.io/linuxserver/qemu-static

docker run --rm --privileged lscr.io/linuxserver/qemu-static --reset

Once registered you can define the dockerfile to use with -f Dockerfile.aarch64.

To help with development, we generate this dependency graph.

Versions¶

• 04.11.24: - Add Nvidia capability needed for h265
• 18.07.24: - Rebase to Ubuntu Noble.
• 12.02.24: - Use universal hardware acceleration blurb
• 09.01.24: - Set ownership on TranscoderTempDirectory when it's been saved in Preferences.
• 16.08.23: - Install unrar from linuxserver repo.
• 03.07.23: - Deprecate armhf. As announced here
• 16.10.22: - Rebase to jammy. Update to s6v3. Remove opencl packages (bundled with plex).
• 18.07.22: - Pin all opencl related driver packages.
• 16.05.22: - Pin opencl version.
• 04.03.22: - Increase verbosity of video device permissions fix, attempt to fix missing group rw.
• 25.12.21: - Install Intel drivers from the official repo.
• 20.01.21: - Deprecate UMASK_SET in favor of UMASK in baseimage, see above for more information.
• 10.12.20: - Add latest Intel Compute packages from github repo for opencl support on latest gen igpu.
• 23.11.20: - Add Bionic branch make Focal default.
• 03.05.20: - Update exposed ports and example docs for bridge mode.
• 23.03.20: - Remove udev hack (no longer needed), suppress uuid error in log during first start.
• 04.12.19: - Add variable for setting PLEX_CLAIM. Remove /transcode volume mapping as it is now set via plex gui and defaults to a location under /config.
• 06.08.19: - Add variable for setting UMASK.
• 10.07.19: - Fix permissions for tuner (/dev/dvb) devices.
• 20.05.19: - Bugfix do not allow Root group for Intel QuickSync ownership rules.
• 23.03.19: - Switching to new Base images, shift to arm32v7 tag.
• 22.03.19: - Fix update logic for VERSION=public.
• 14.03.19: - Switch to new api endpoints, enable beta (plex pass) updates for armhf and aarch64.
• 15.02.19: - Clean up plex pid after unclean stop.
• 11.02.19: - Fix nvidia variables, add device variables.
• 16.01.19: - Add pipeline logic, multi arch, and HW transcoding configuration; remove avahi service.
• 07.09.18: - Rebase to ubuntu bionic, add udev package.
• 09.12.17: - Fix continuation lines.
• 12.07.17: - Add inspect commands to README, move to jenkins build and push.
• 28.05.17: - Add unrar package as per requests, for subzero plugin.
• 11.01.17: - Use Plex environment variables from pms docker, change abc home folder to /app to alleviate usermod chowning library
• 03.01.17: - Use case insensitive version variable matching rather than export and make lowercase.
• 17.10.16: - Allow use of uppercase version variable
• 01.10.16: - Add TZ info to README.
• 09.09.16: - Add layer badges to README.
• 27.08.16: - Add badges to README.
• 22.08.16: - Rebased to xenial and s6 overlay
• 07.04.16: - removed /transcode volume support (upstream Plex change) and modified PlexPass download method to prevent unauthorised usage of paid PMS
• 24.09.15: - added optional support for volume transcoding (/transcode), and various typo fixes.
• 17.09.15: - Changed to run chmod only once
• 19.09.15: - Plex updated their download servers from http to https
• 28.08.15: - Removed plexpass from routine, and now uses VERSION as a combination fix.
• 18.07.15: - Moved autoupdate to be hosted by linuxserver.io and implemented bugfix thanks to ljm42.
• 09.07.15: - Now with ability to pick static version number.
• 08.07.15: - Now with autoupdates. (Hosted by fanart.tv)
• 03.07.15: - Fixed a mistake that allowed plex to run as user plex rather than abc (99:100). Thanks to double16 for spotting this.