What is Plex?

From their website:

With our free app you can add, access, and share all the entertainment that matters to you, on almost any device—including your own personal media collection. Guess that makes us the hardest working app in show business.

On YAMS, Plex is one of the most important parts: Plex is going to be your “Netflix”, “Hulu” or “Amazon Prime”. This means you’ll be able to stream your TV shows and movies to any device using Plex.

First steps

To start, you need to allow your IP range to access the Plex setup. In your server, first stop YAMS.

$ yams stop

Now, go to your Plex config in YAMS. For the purposes of this tutorial, I’m asuming your install location is /opt/yams.

$ cd /opt/yams/config/plex/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/

Inside that folder, open Preferences.xml.

/opt/yams/config/plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server$ vim Preferences.xml

(you don’t have to use vim, you can use nano if you want to).

On the Preferences.xml file, add the following after the <Preferences directive:

<Preferences allowedNetworks="<your_subnet_IP>/255.255.255.0" ...

The ... is the rest of the XML file, you only have to add the allowedNetworks directive.

How do you find your subnet IP?

This depends on your network configuration, but it sometimes goes with the following rules:

• If your server IP is 192.168.0.100, your subnet is 192.168.0.0.
• If your server IP is 10.0.0.25, your subnet is 10.0.0.0.

Finally, restart YAMS.

$ yams restart

To check if everything is working, you can try by running:

$ docker logs plex

If you see something like this:

Failed to load preferences at /config/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Preferences.xml
Failed to load preferences at /config/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Preferences.xml

It means your Preferences.xml is badly formatted. Try to fix it and try again.

Once you finish the Preferences config, you can continue.

Note: You can read more about this fix here: https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/plex-not-authorized-you-do-not-have-access-to-this-server.96858/.

Initial configuration

In your browser, go to http://{your-ip-address}:32400/web and you’ll see Plex’s setup page. Click on “Got it!” to continue.

After logging in, you’ll see a modal that says “Plex Pass”. You can close that.

On the “Name” screen, select a name for your server and click on continue.

On the “Sync Your Watch State and Ratings” screen, just click “No”.

Now on “Media Library”, click on “Add Library”.

Adding Movies

On the “Add Library” modal, select “Movies” and click “Next”.

Now, click on “Browse For Media Folder”.

On the “Add Folder” modal, select the movies path (/data/movies) and click on “Add”.

Your “Add Library” modal should look like this. Finally, click on “Add Library”.

Adding TV Shows

On “Media Library”, click on “Add Library”.

On the “Add Library” modal, select “TV Shows” and click “Next”.

Now, click on “Browse For Media Folder”.

On the “Add Folder” modal, select the TV Shows path (/data/tvshows) and click on “Add”.

Your “Add Library” modal should look like this. Finally, click on “Add Library”.

In the end, your “Media Library” screen should look like this. If it’s okay, click on “Next”.

Finish

On the “Finish screen”, click on “Done”.

You should see the Plex dashboard now! On the left side panel, click on “More”.

There, you should find your local “Movies” and “TV Shows”.

That’s all!

YAMS is fully up and running! Now, let’s add some content. Move on to Running everything together.

Do you want a more in depth configuration?

If you want a more in depth configuration, I recommend you check the TRaSH Guide for Plex.