I was a bit of an experienced server admin in a past life...I used to be a support technician in a data center and I worked with various methods of partitioning and LVM and filesystem types etc etc. I can't tell you how many servers I've installed fresh, customized Ubuntu, CentOS, FreeBSD, Windows and other server operating systems on. However I've grown old and I've basically forgotten anything important, so I need a refresher and personal opinions please.
I ran Plex for a few years on my Windows gaming desktop, but recently snagged a cheap HP DL380 G5 server and spun it up in my basement with Ubuntu Server. The drives are 6 cheap 1TB drives configured in RAID5 (because the server is older and doesn't support RAID6 but that's fine). When I installed Ubuntu, I did simplest default setup for partitioning, which is to just use all 5TB of space in single LVM setup with a separate /boot (I believe I do remember that you can't have /boot in LVM right...).
Here's my current fdisk configuration:
adam@dionysus:~$ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/cciss/c0d0: 4.6 TiB, 5000855773184 bytes, 9767296432 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 015837A6-3C07-4B3B-A6E9-8AA5313648F6
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/cciss/c0d0p1 2048 4095 2048 1M BIOS boot
/dev/cciss/c0d0p2 4096 1003519 999424 488M Linux filesystem
/dev/cciss/c0d0p3 1003520 9767294975 9766291456 4.6T Linux LVM
Disk /dev/mapper/dionysus--vg-root: 4.5 TiB, 4982824763392 bytes, 9732079616 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/mapper/dionysus--vg-swap_1: 16 GiB, 17175674880 bytes, 33546240 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/mapper/cryptswap1: 16 GiB, 17175150592 bytes, 33545216 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
adam@dionysus:~$
And here's output from mount:
adam@dionysus:~$ sudo mount
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=8194960k,nr_inodes=2048740,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=1643028k,mode=755)
/dev/mapper/dionysus--vg-root on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
tmpfs on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)
tmpfs on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,mode=755)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,xattr,release_agent=/lib/systemd/systemd-cgroups-agent,name=systemd)
pstore on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/pids type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,pids)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,freezer)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls,net_prio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,net_cls,net_prio)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu,cpuacct type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpu,cpuacct)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,blkio)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/memory type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,memory)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/devices type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,devices)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/perf_event type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,perf_event)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpuset)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/hugetlb type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,hugetlb)
systemd-1 on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=24,pgrp=1,timeout=0,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct)
hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs (rw,relatime)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime)
mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,relatime)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,relatime)
tracefs on /sys/kernel/debug/tracing type tracefs (rw,relatime)
/dev/cciss/c0d0p2 on /boot type ext2 (rw,relatime,block_validity,barrier,user_xattr,acl)
lxcfs on /var/lib/lxcfs type fuse.lxcfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other)
tmpfs on /run/user/1000 type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=1643028k,mode=700,uid=1000,gid=1000)
/home/.ecryptfs/adam/.Private on /home/adam type ecryptfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,ecryptfs_fnek_sig=d268e70daa665759,ecryptfs_sig=16c38c262701fe6a,ecryptfs_cipher=aes,ecryptfs_key_bytes=16,ecryptfs_unlink_sigs)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,relatime)
adam@dionysus:~$
It's a brand new fresh install plus "apt-get update -y && apt-get upgrade -y && reboot" and she purring like a kitten. Now that I'm about to transfer my 3TB of media files over, I realized that I might want to modify the LVM partitioning or the native partitioning before I set where the media files are stored.
So here are my requests to everyone out there that has run or is running Plex on Linux:
- How do you have your partitioning and/or LVM setup and why?
- What directories do you use to store your media and why?
- If different than media storage directories (answer to above question), what directories do you use for downloads/new media files for Plex to discover and then add to Library? (In other words, when you have a new media file to add to your library, where do you store it? What is your process?)
- Have you ever had any negative experiences that taught you important lessons about Linux partitioning with storing and hosting large media files such as for a Plex server?
Also, after I installed Plex, I noticed on my Windows machine that there was a new network location available named "Plex Media Server: dionysus". I never noticed this when I ran Plex via Windows, but I probably didn't see it (no need to look for network location access to a media server as it was hosted locally, I could just store files locally). In that network location directory I see these default directories: Music, Photos, Video. Can someone give me an idea of what those reference? Specifically including directories for a Linux-hosted version of Plex if possible...
I'm open to completely reinstalling Plex and/or repartitioning as would be best use case scenario. As I mentioned I did use LVM so I could potentially easily modify the LVM setup however necessary rather than completely reinstalling, but I'm open to either. Want to configure the server in best method now during initial install rather than find out later down the line that I should have done it a different way for best results etc.
Thanks a lot for feedback and guidance fellow Plexers!
Moderator Edit: Added Code formatting as requested