Tech Perplexed

Part 3 - Setting up the services

2018-03-26T16:58:00.002-07:00

You have finished Part 2 - Installing the necessary apps, congratulations! You are now a Linux expert, all the hard work is done. All that is left is to set up your various services.

In fact, the only service that needs any explaining is Plex.

Plex/Emby

Plex is the second most fiddly of all installations... because you will only have a limited time frame to complete the task. No worries, if you follow these steps, you'll be running Plex before you know it.

Because Plex is so moody, I suggest you make some preparations first in getting your domain ready. You will need to visit your domain provider, and set up an A record for each service you add.

So, visit your domain registrar (mine is CloudFlare) and follow their instructions to create an A record for plex and point that to the IP address of your VPS:

I suggest you wait a few minutes to allow the domain to propagate, then proceed with the installation. You will be asked to copy and paste your claim token. Visit the site plex.tv/claim and click Copy to Clipboard.

Then head back to PuTTY and right click to paste.

Did you notice that the Plex claim website mentioned you only have 4 minutes to complete the claim? Yeah... that is not a lot of time! So as soon as the installation has finished, don't hesitate and run over to visit https://yourdomain:8443 (use your actual domain of course) and don't forget to add the :8443 behind the domain.

You will be asked to log in, so please do just that.

You should be able to proceed and set up your Plex server:

Congratulations, Plex is installed and claimed as yours!

Note: if something goes wrong (for example the 4 minutes expire without being able to claim the server - or if your domain has not properly propagated yet), you will need to uninstall Plex and delete all user settings. Then wait a few minutes and repeat the process.

You can find your content under /Media:

As for Emby, it is much easier to setup than Plex. The link should pop right up after installation. As you go through the setup, add your media by selecting the /Media folder.

After you're done, make sure you create a backup - so you will never need to reclaim your server or add your libraries again.

Sonarr, Radarr, Deluge etc.

You can link Sonarr, Radarr, Deluge etc together by referring to their individual containers and default port number. Now, this probably sounds confusing, so I'll use an example to explain what I meant.

This is the Download Clients menu in Sonarr. In order for Sonarr to talk to Deluge, you will need to provide the Deluge host as "deluge", the port number as "8112" and leave Use SSL unticked.

That way every application can communicate with each other.

I have many more questions!

I'm so glad you asked... Gooby participant "deedeefink" has put together an excellent Wiki on Github. Check it out!

Part 2 - Installing the necessary apps

2018-03-26T16:55:00.002-07:00

You have finished Part 1 - Super simple one step installation - and are now ready to install the necessary apps.

Optional: If you clicked PuTTY away, you can log back in with your new user and the password you chose in Part 1.

If you exited Gooby, you can go back to the menu by typing

gooby

You can explore the options on your own, but here are a few important apps that require more than just a one step installation. Please follow along carefully.

Configuring Rclone

Arguably, the heart of your entire installation will be Rclone, so let's start with that. It is one of the most vital applications to install because it will connect to your Google drive. It is also the the hardest part of this entire tutorial... but it needs to be done. Grit your teeth and follow along please.

You can find Rclone in menu B - Media Applications.

After you confirm that you want to install Rclone, you will be asked if you want to install the Stable or Beta version. I suggest you accept the default "S" for stable, so just hit Enter.

You will be presented with a choice, type the letter n for "New remote" and press the Enter key.

You are asked to give a name. With the latest version of Gooby you can pick any name you want, for example "Gdrive" (without the quotes).

Check which option mentions Google Drive "drive" in the list (in the latest version this is #12), so type 12 and Enter.

Leave client_id> blank, just Enter.
Leave client_secret> blank as well, just Enter.

Scope that Rclone should use> 1 (full access)

ID of root folder> blank, just Enter
Service account files> again leave blank, just Enter.

Choose n, because No, you don't need to edit the advanced config.

Finally type the letter n for No, you don't want to use auto config and Enter.

You'll get a message that if your browser doesn't open, you will need to copy and paste the following link. You will need to place the entire link in a block by dragging your mouse (see screenshot below). Do not enter Ctrl-C - remember, this is PuTTY - dragging the mouse and placing the link in a block means it's copied.

Go to your local browser and paste the link. You will be asked to log into Google and accept authorization. You will then be given a code to paste in PuTTY.

Paste the code (right click), press Enter.

Next you will be asked if you want to configure it as a team drive. Unless you know exactly what this means, type n - you don't want it.

If you see any unknown options, just press Enter... I don't know what to do with them either (Rclone keeps adding features) :)

Finally type y that Yes, all is okay and then q to Quit config.

You should see the following in your list of current remotes:

In the next two sections you will be asked to confirm what you named your drive - you will more than likely just need to press Enter here.

Lastly, you can indicate what folder you use for your Media in Google itself. I put all my content in a folder called Media - so that is what I entered.

Pfew! You have managed to get through the hardest part - the rest will be a breeze!

All done!

Now that the hardest part is done, you can go on to the last and final Part 3 - Setting up the services, where everything will come nicely together!

Part 1 - Super simple one step installation

2018-03-26T16:45:00.001-07:00

You have finished Read first: Creating an infinite Plex server using a VPS and Cloud service. That means you have a fresh new Debian or Ubuntu installation and can access your VPS using PuTTY or its equivalent on your OS.

Now on to the super simple three step installation - you'll be up and running in no time, I promise.

Introducing: Gooby

Gooby is a menu driven fully automatic installation of several applications. It doesn't get simpler than that! I am in no way responsible how you use these applications - that is entirely up to you. Please respect and obey the copyright laws of your country.

The following applications are included in the menu:

Rclone (to connect your Google drive)
Plex (to watch the content that you own)
Tautulli (to monitor Plex)
Emby (a media server similar to Plex)
Sonarr (to manage TV shows)
Radarr (to manage movies)
Deluge (to collect content)
NZBGet (to access newsgroups)
Jackett (for using your own favorite trackers)
Netdata (to monitor your server)
Ombi (requested content collector)
Organizer (to easily access all your services)
Portainer (management tool for Docker)

You can find the Gooby project on GitHub including a list of additional apps that are available through self installation (instructions in the Wiki).

Installing Gooby

You are probably still logged into PuTTY and looking at that beautiful green cursor. Let's continue where we left off... But first, please read this important disclaimer:

This software is supplied "AS IS" without any warranties and support. You are solely responsible for determining whether Gooby is compatible with your equipment and other software installed on your system. Make sure you have a backup of all your important data!

Ok, with that out of the way, let's get going!

Now all you need to do is copy the line below (Ctrl C) and paste this in PuTTY (right click), then press Enter.

sudo wget http://bit.ly/GetGooby2 -O /tmp/install.sh && sudo bash /tmp/install.sh

Note: This is a rather long line, make sure you copy everything (you will probably need to scroll horizontally).

Then paste this line in your PuTTY session (remember, right click in PuTTY to paste).

Whoa! Lots of text will flash by for a few minutes... that's a good thing. When Gooby is installed, you'll be presented with this menu:

Go ahead, be brave, type gooby and hit Enter!

Creating user

If you started on a fresh server, Gooby will inform you that a new user needs to be created. Type the letter y - you are sure you want to create a new user. No one should ever perform tasks as root... it's a Linux thing. If you exit now, you can always go back to the wizard by typing "gooby".

Next, you will be asked to pick a password for your new user. This is the password you will have to type in every time you need to maintain Linux... so make sure it is a strong password, yet easy to remember.

You can fill out your personal information if you wish, or enter through the fields leaving them empty. I picked perplexed as my user:

Check if your username has changed from "root" to your new user.

You can now access the menu by typing:

gooby

Any time you want to make changes, that is how you access the menu.

Initializing Gooby

You will be asked two questions now, so Gooby can start doing its magic. Please provide your domain name and email address when asked:

Once you have given your domain name and email address, you'll have to wait a few more minutes for the menu to appear.

Main menu

You are now in the main menu.

Congratulations, your VPS is now ready to receive all the additional applications. You can proceed with Part 2 - Installing the necessary apps.

Part 5 - Restoring the Plex database

2018-02-17T18:52:00.002-07:00

Now that you finished Part 4 - Restoring Rclone and Plexdrive configuration, all that is needed is restore the Plex database - and you won't even notice your server has changed.

There are a few things to check first.

Check mount

Before you proceed, make absolutely sure that the drive you use with Plex is properly mounted. Especially Plexdrive can take a while to build the cache - and you don't want Plex to think all your movies and tv shows have disappeared!

If you use the switch script as outlined in Part 6 of the first tutorial, make sure you run that after the reboot to mount the drive to your preferred location.

If you followed that guide to the letter, there are three possible locations where your Plex mount points to - only you know which of the options you chose, so I'll just cover all three here and let you pick the one that fits your setup.

Log into PuTTY with your own user to check whether Plex is ready to be restored.

If just just setup your Plex server to use Rclone, make sure that you see your Google files when you run

ls /mnt/Gdrive

If you setup Plex to use Plexdrive, check by typing

ls /mnt/Plexdrive

If you followed the entire tutorial and are using the switch script (and really, you should!), then you need to verify if your files are located at

ls /home/Plex

All set? Ok, let's restore!

Creating the script

Create a new (empty) file in Notepad++. Make sure you change the bottom bar to show "Unix (LF)".

Paste the following into your file

#!/bin/bash

# Stopping services

sudo systemctl stop plexpy.service
sudo service plexmediaserver stop

# Restore database

read -e -p "File name to restore: " -i "$(hostname).$(date +%F)" filename

sudo rclone copy Gdrive:/Backup/$filename.tar.bz2 /tmp --checksum --drive-chunk-size=64M -v

if [ -e "/tmp/$filename.tar.bz2" ]

then
echo "$filename found, proceeding..."
else
echo "$filename not found on Google"
echo "Please check the correct name and try again"
echo "Exiting script..."
sudo rm /tmp/restore-plexdb
exit
fi

# Replacing Plex vanilla with Plex backup

sudo mv /var/lib/plexmediaserver /var/lib/plexmediaserver-vanilla
sudo tar -xvf /tmp/$filename.tar.bz2 -C /

# Starting services

sudo chown -R plex:plex /var/lib/plexmediaserver
sudo service plexmediaserver start
sudo systemctl start plexpy.service

# Cleaning up

read -e -p "Remove vanilla Plex installation (Y/n)? " -i "Y" choice

case "$choice" in
y|Y ) sudo rm -r /var/lib/plexmediaserver-vanilla;;
* ) echo "Your old installation is available at /var/lib/plexmediaserver-vanilla";;
esac

sudo rm /tmp/restore-plexdb
sudo rm /tmp/$filename.*
cd ~

# End message

echo ""
echo "================================="
echo " Your Plex database is restored "
echo " Make sure your drive is mounted "
echo " Run the switch script manually! "
echo "================================="
echo ""

# To run this file copy the line below without the # and paste in PuTTY

# sudo wget https://www.dropbox.com/s/yourpersonallink/yourfilename?dl=0 -O /tmp/restore-plexdb && sudo chmod +x /tmp/restore-plexdb && /tmp/restore-plexdb

There actually isn't a lot to tweak here. If you followed the Backup script instructions as mentioned in part 6 of the first tutorial, all you need to do is copy the correct Dropbox link into the file and you're good to go.

Probably needless to say, but you can find the exact name and date of the Plex backup script in Google:

You hope enjoyed my tutorial of your own personal turnkey restore process!

Part 4 - Restoring Rclone and Plexdrive configuration

2018-02-17T16:16:00.000-07:00

You finished Part 3 - Installing Plex, Rclone and Plexdrive, now let's restore your personal settings.

In part 4 and part 5 of the first tutorial you went through the trouble of setting up an API at Google, configuring Rclone and Plexdrive, and setting up your mount scripts. Of course, once you have done that, restoring should be as easy as running a single line script... right? Right!

Creating the script

Here is how you do that. As before, create a new (empty) file in Notepad++. Make sure you change the bottom bar to show "Unix (LF)".

Paste the following into your file

#!/bin/bash

# Restore Rclone config

mkdir -p ~/.config/rclone
cat > ~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf << EOF
Paste contents of your rclone config file here (replace this text)
EOF

# Restoring scripts backup

cd /tmp
sudo rclone copy Gdrive:/Backup/VPSBackup.tar.bz2 /tmp --checksum --drive-chunk-size=64M -v
sudo -s tar -xvf /tmp/VPSBackup.tar.bz2 -C /
sudo rm /tmp/VPSBackup.*
cd ~

# Restoring services

sudo mkdir /mnt/Plexdrive
sudo systemctl enable rclone.service
sudo systemctl enable plexdrive.service
sudo systemctl enable plexpy.service
sudo systemctl enable plexproxy.service

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

sudo chown plexuser:nogroup -R /opt/plexpy
sudo systemctl start plexpy.service

chmod +x ~/bin/*

# Creating backup cron

(crontab -l 2>/dev/null; echo "5 1 * * Sun /home/plexuser/bin/plex-backup > /dev/null 2>&1") | crontab -

# Reboot

read -e -p "Reboot (Y/n)? " -i "Y" choice
case "$choice" in
y|Y ) sudo reboot;;
* ) echo "Manual reboot required.";;
esac

# Cleaning up

sudo rm /tmp/restore-scripts
cd ~

# End message

echo ""
echo "================================================"
echo " Please reboot! Then restore your Plex database "
echo "================================================"
echo ""

# To run this file copy the line below without the # and paste in PuTTY
# sudo wget https://www.dropbox.com/s/yourpersonallink/yourfilename?dl=0 -O /tmp/restore-scripts && sudo chmod +x /tmp/restore-scripts && /tmp/restore-scripts

The first step in the process is to restore Rclone, which can then be used to restore the rest.

Getting the Rclone config

The information you need is in the Rclone configuration script. Which, luckily, is included in the backup you created in part 1 of this tutorial. But that's all zipped up and stored on Google - the easiest way to extract that information is from there.

Visit https://drive.google.com and open the Backup folder. Then right-click the file VPSBackup (or whatever you named your file in part 1), and download it to your local computer.

Go to the folder where you downloaded the file. right click to select 7-Zip and click "Extract Here" (or if you wish, extract to a new folder named VPSBackup.tar):

This will create a new file named "VPSBackup.tar". Repeat the process of extracting that as well and you will see a list of the folders you backed up.

Descend into home / yourusername / .config / rclone - you should see the rclone.conf file. Right-click that one, and choose "Edit with Notepad++".

Copy the entire content of that file to your clipboard (Ctrl-C). Then go back to the script you created above and paste the entire content between the two EOF statements (Ctrl-V). Make sure you replace the text that is currently there! It will probably look like somewhat like this:

It's okay if you can't read it... your VPS can and that's the main thing!

Adapting the script

Make sure you change the remaining red text to reflect your own setup!

You can adapt this script to suit your own situation. For example, if you don't run Tautulli or don't use CloudFlare, you can remove the lines "sudo systemctl enable plexpy.service" and "sudo systemctl enable plexproxy.service", respectively.

Again, the purpose of this tutorial is to restore your VPS to your personal and unique setup.

Running the script

Once adapted to your needs, you can run the script on each consequent installation and you will never have to mess with configuring Rclone and Plexdrive ever again.

You're ready for the final Part 5 - Restoring the Plex database to restore Plex to its former glory.

Part 3 - Installing Plex, Rclone and Plexdrive

2018-02-17T16:15:00.002-07:00

You have installed all upgrades and made the VPS your own in Part 2 - Updating the VPS.

Now is probably the moment you usually install Plex, Rclone and Plexdrive as covered in part 3 and part 4 of the first tutorial. This too can be automated without any input from you after you have set your Plex preferences.

Creating the script

Open Notepad++ on your local computer and create a new (empty) file. Make sure you change the bottom bar to show "Unix (LF)".

Paste the following into your file:

#!/bin/bash

# Install Plex

cd ~
bash -c "$(wget -qO - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mrworf/plexupdate/master/extras/installer.sh)"

# Install Rclone

cd /tmp
curl -O https://downloads.rclone.org/rclone-current-linux-amd64.zip
unzip rclone-current-linux-amd64.zip
cd rclone-*-linux-amd64
sudo cp rclone /usr/sbin/
sudo chown root:root /usr/sbin/rclone
sudo chmod 755 /usr/sbin/rclone
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/share/man/man1
sudo cp rclone.1 /usr/local/share/man/man1/
sudo mandb
cd ..
sudo rm -f rclone-current-linux-amd64.zip
sudo rm -r rclone-*-linux-amd64
cd ~

# Install Plexdrive

cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/dweidenfeld/plexdrive/releases/download/5.0.0/plexdrive-linux-amd64
sudo mv plexdrive-linux-amd64 plexdrive
sudo mv plexdrive /usr/local/bin/
sudo chown root:root /usr/local/bin/plexdrive
sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/plexdrive
cd ~

# Install PlexPy

cd /opt/
sudo git clone https://github.com/JonnyWong16/plexpy.git

# Cleaning up

sudo rm /tmp/install-plex
cd ~

# End message

echo ""
echo "================================================="
echo " You can now proceed with restoring your scripts "
echo "================================================="
echo ""

# To run this file copy the line below without the # and paste in PuTTY

# sudo wget https://www.dropbox.com/s/yourpersonallink/yourfilename?dl=0 -O /tmp/install-apps && sudo chmod +x /tmp/install-apps && /tmp/install-apps

Save this file with an appropriate name, upload to Dropbox and copy the link as you did with the first script. There will be four scripts in total:

You can pick whatever file names work best for you though!

Running the script

To run this script, select the entire last line without the red part and without the # and copy this to the clipboard.

Then log into PuTTY with your own username and right-click to paste the script.

Here is an explanation of what this script will do:

Plex will be installed and configured (this will require your input).
Rclone will be installed.
Plexdrive will be installed.
Tautulli (PlexPy) will be installed as well.

Feel free to add other programs you wish to install with one click - after all, this is your configuration!

Now that Plex, Rclone and Plexdrive are all installed in "vanilla" status, you can now forward to Part 4 - Part 4 - Restoring Rclone and Plexdrive configuration where we'll get really personal.

Part 2 - Updating the VPS

2018-02-17T16:15:00.000-07:00

You have prepared your backup script in Part 1 - How to restore your VPS in minutes, and your two backups (Plex database and VPS settings) are safely stored in the (Google) cloud.

You wiped your VPS, or you signed up with a new provider. Either way, you are now looking at a brand new, clean VPS, waiting to be installed.

What is the first thing you usually do? You configure Ubuntu to install updates, install the apps you can't live without, set your clock and firewall, change your root password and create your user. Basically, all the steps covered in part 2 of the first tutorial.

Notice how these steps never vary? You perform them without thinking, each and every time, always the same way. The perfect candidate for automation!

Creating a script to update the VPS

So, without further ado, here is how you create a script to automate this. So go ahead, open Notepad++ on your local computer and create a new (empty) file. Make sure you change the bottom bar to show "Unix (LF)", as shown in the screenshot. To do this you need to right-click "Windows (CR/LF)" and select "Unix (LF)" instead.

Paste the following into your file:

#!/bin/bash

# Initial update

sudo apt-get -y --force-yes update
sudo apt-get -y --force-yes upgrade

# Install unattended upgrades

sudo apt-get -y --force-yes install unattended-upgrades

if [[ ! -f /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades.bak ]]; then
sudo cp /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades.bak
sudo rm /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades
echo "APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists \"1\";
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages \"1\";
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval \"30\";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade \"1\";" | sudo tee --append /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades
fi

# Set language

test "$LANG" = "en_US.UTF-8" \
|| echo "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" >>/etc/locale.gen \
&& locale-gen --lang en_US.UTF-8

# Install apps

sudo apt-get -y install \
fail2ban \
nano \
unzip \
wget \
curl \
fuse \
ufw \
git \
socat \
denyhosts at sudo software-properties-common

# Configure firewall

sudo ufw default deny incoming
sudo ufw default allow outgoing
sudo ufw allow ssh
sudo ufw allow 32400
sudo ufw allow 33400
sudo ufw allow 8181
sudo ufw --force enable

# Set timezone

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

# Change root password

echo -e "You will now need to change your root password"
passwd

# Create user

read -e -p "Your preferred username: " -i "plexuser" yourusername
read -e -p "Your preferred password: " -i "Pa$$w0rd" yourpassword

adduser $yourusername --gecos ",,," --disabled-password
echo "$yourusername:$yourpassword" | chpasswd
usermod -a -G sudo $yourusername
echo -e "$yourusername\tALL=(ALL)\tNOPASSWD:ALL" > /etc/sudoers.d/$yourusername
chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers.d/$yourusername

# Cleaning up

sudo rm /tmp/update-vps

# Reboot

read -e -p "Reboot (Y/n)? " -i "Y" choice

case "$choice" in
y|Y ) sudo reboot;;
* ) echo "Manual reboot required.";;
esac

# End message

echo ""
echo "==================================================="
echo " Please reboot! Then proceed with the installation "
echo "==================================================="
echo ""

# Switch to user

su $yourusername

# To run this file copy the line below without the # and paste in PuTTY

# sudo wget https://www.dropbox.com/s/yourpersonallink/yourfilename?dl=0 -O /tmp/update-vps && sudo chmod +x /tmp/update-vps && sudo /tmp/update-vps

Notice the lines in red. Here is an explanation on what to do with each of them:

32400
If you use Plex without CloudFlare, leave it the way it is. However, if you have followed the tutorial to setup CloudFlare with Plex, make sure you change the port from 32400 to 8443.

plexuser / Pa$$w0rd
Change the parts in red to your own username and password.

Leave the last line in red (the Dropbox link) the way it is for now.

Getting the file link

Once done, save your script with any filename you want, and upload it to Dropbox. I named my file 1-update-vps.bash, but the name you choose doesn't matter.

Pro tip: the reason I save the script files with the extension .bash is so that I can set them to always open with Notepad++ and make them easier to read.

The reason I suggest Dropbox is because you will need public access to your newly created script, but you won't want other people to be able to find it. Dropbox is perfect for that!

You now need to copy the Dropbox link. The easiest way is just right-click the file, then click "Copy Dropbox link".

Now open your file again (right-click the file, then click "Edit with Notepad++"). Then replace the red part in the last line with the link you just copied from Dropbox and save your file again.

Running the script

Once you have either rebuilt your VPS or moved to a new server, all you need to is open the script on your local computer, then copy (Ctrl-C) the entire last line without the red part and without the #. In the example above, that would be:

sudo wget https://www.dropbox.com/s/yourpersonallink/yourfilename?dl=0 -O /tmp/1-update-vps && sudo chmod +x /tmp/1-update-vps && sudo /tmp/1-update-vps

The last step is to paste this in PuTTY (I'm sure I won't have to remind you that pasting in PuTTY is done by right-click) to run the script.

Here is an explanation of what this script will do:

Your VPS will update itself with all the latest security patches and upgrades.
The VPS will always remain up to date by installing unattended upgrades.
It will set the language to US English. You can remove this section if you have a VPS in the country which language you speak.
It will install the applications you use. Feel free to add or remove what you want there.
It will configure your firewall with the ports needed for Plex, trakt.tv and PlexPy.
You will be asked to pick your local timezone.
You will be asked to set your strong root password.
Your personal user will be created with the password you define.
Optionally, but highly recommended, you will be asked to reboot.

Your VPS is ready for the Plex installation, so once it's back online, you can login as your own user and proceed with Part 3 - Installing Plex, Rclone and Plexdrive.

Part 1 - How to restore your VPS in minutes

2018-02-17T15:59:00.001-07:00

If you are anything like me, you like to play with your VPS. Perhaps you like to reinstall it occasionally, or change to a new provider, or repair a corrupted server. I personally reinstall my VPS so often, that I can follow the guide almost blindly and be back to the original state in less than an hour.

Still, I tried to think of ways to speed that up even further. What if I could create a true turnkey restore script, catered to my installation? That is why I came up with these backup and restore scripts and have decided to share them with you all.

First, it is important to note that you need to know how to setup your VPS in the first place. After all, you don't want to restore to my installation, you want to restore to your installation. I assume that you have followed and fully understand the Infinite Plex tutorial from start to finish.

Remember, you need to have created and run the Plex backup script from Part 6 - because this tutorial will proceed where that guide left off.

What you need

You will probably need to install a few additional apps on your local computer:

I highly recommend you install Notepad++ if you are using Windows.
For opening compressed files, I use 7-Zip which is free and open source as well.
I personally use a free Dropbox account for online storage (the few scripts that you need are tiny). Unfortunately, Google won't work, because you can't directly link to a file.

If you are a Mac user, you will need to find the equivalent of the above apps.

Creating a backup of your settings

The first step in creating a turnkey restore option is to create a backup of all your modified files.

The backup script, created in PuTTY under your own user:

nano ~/bin/vps-backup

Paste the following:

#!/bin/bash

# Stopping services
sudo systemctl stop plexpy.service
sudo service plexmediaserver stop

# Creating backup
sudo -s tar -cvjf /tmp/VPSBackup.tar.bz2 \
~/* \
~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf \
/etc/systemd/system/rclone.service \
/etc/systemd/system/plexdrive.service \
/etc/systemd/system/plexpy.service \
/etc/systemd/system/plexproxy.service \
/opt/plexpy/config.ini \
/opt/plexpy/plexpy.db \
/root/.plexdrive/config.json \
/root/.plexdrive/token.json

# Starting services
sudo service plexmediaserver start
sudo systemctl start plexpy.service

# Copying to Gdrive and cleaning up
sudo rclone copy /tmp/VPSBackup.* Gdrive:/Backup -v --checksum --drive-chunk-size=64M
sudo rm /tmp/VPSBackup.*
echo Done!

Save with Ctrl-O, Enter, then Ctrl-X. Make the script executable:

chmod +x ~/bin/vps-backup

This will create a backup of your most important VPS configuration files and copy it to a folder named "Backup" in Google. You can run the script by typing "vpsbackup". Done? Great! You're halfway there.

Because you have followed the entire "Infinite Plex on a VPS" tutorial, by now I assume you will be able to figure out which parts to edit or remove if you haven't installed Tautulli (PlexPy), for example, or if your configuration deviates from the initial guide.

Your backup will be online in Google:\Backup and the file name will be VPSBackup.tar.bz2.

Note: in this tutorial I'm not covering backing up or restoring your websites, from the tutorial Creating a Website on a VPS. I'm assuming the above script mentions enough details to add those files yourself, should you wish to.

Now that you have backed up both your Plex database and your most important files, let's get on with the first restore script in Part 2 - Updating the VPS.

Part 2 - Using CloudFlare with Plex

2018-01-13T14:13:00.001-07:00

You finished Part 1 - Enabling CloudFlare. Now we'll set it up to work with Plex.

Before we go any further though, it is important to check if your website works properly with CloudFlare. So go and visit your Plex subdomain. In my case, plex.techperplexed.ga. What you should see after a minute or so:

Perfect! That means your site is properly managed by CloudFlare. If you don't see a similar image as the above on your own site, don't proceed, but go back to part 1 and check all your steps thoroughly.

Plex Settings

When your site is configured with CloudFlare, you can now set up Plex to do the same. Go to https://app.plex.tv/ to visit your Plex server and go to the Settings.

Click Network, make sure "Preferred" is selected next to Secure connections, then click "Show Advanced".

Scroll down to "Custom server access URLs" and type the following:

https://plex.yourdomain:8443

This is what mine looks like:

Click "Save Changes".

Next, go to Remote Access and click "Disable Remote Access"

Whaaat? But we went through such trouble to enable it in Part 3 of the Plex tutorial! Yeah, I know... trust me, it's necessary. It will now display in red that your server is not available outside your network.

Next, we need to configure your VPS.

Creating the CloudFlare script

Start a PuTTY session with your own username.

Before you proceed, make sure you followed the steps described in "Getting the firewall ready for Plex" in Part 2 - Configuring Ubuntu. Setting up CloudFlare properly is dependent on an active UFW firewall.

Check if socat is installed (it should be already):

sudo apt-get install socat

Create the CloudFlare script:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/plexproxy.service

Paste the following:

[Unit]
Description=Proxy 8443 to 32400 internally but not externally
After=syslog.target local-fs.target network.target
[Service]
Type=simple
User=root
Group=root
ExecStart=/usr/bin/socat tcp-listen:8443,reuseaddr,fork tcp:localhost:32400
ExecStop=
Restart=always
RestartSec=5
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Save with Ctrl-O, Enter, then Ctrl-X. Enable the script:

sudo systemctl enable plexproxy.service

Start the service:

sudo service plexproxy start

Then reload the services.

systemctl daemon-reload

Remember how we set up a firewall in Part 2 of the Plex tutorial? We opened port 32400 for use of Plex. Because CloudFlare is taking over, we now need to close the port. Type

sudo ufw delete allow 32400

(If you get an error, try "sudo ufw delete allow 32400/tcp" instead)

Now add port 8443 by typing

sudo ufw allow 8443

You can check if your port changes went correctly by typing:

sudo ufw status

It should look somewhat like this:

You can now click away PuTTY.

Check your Plex server

That is all there is to it. If all went well, you can now visit https://plex.yourdomain:8443 in your browser. You probably have to login, but everything should work properly.

Congratulations! Please let me know in the comments if you experience a faster Plex through CloudFlare!

Part 1 - Enabling CloudFlare

2018-01-13T11:55:00.000-07:00

CloudFlare - you probably heard of it, but what exactly is it? And more importantly, do you need it?

The picture below explains to some degree what CloudFlare does - it speeds up websites, and blocks attackers.

If that is all you needed to know, you can skip reading the next section.

What CloudFlare does

Here is a slightly longer explanation.

The idea is that a caching service like CloudFlare is built to provide fast web access to your site for everyone no matter where they live. It does this by having high-speed connections around the world.

No matter where your site is hosted, people hitting your site get the data via the cache and, when not cached, their cache populates from a local server that connects to your actual site.

There are a lot of people that swear this drastically improves Plex performance, especially those operating their VPS in different countries.

It may not impact you especially if your VPS is close to where you live, but if this sounds like something you could use, it's definitely worth setting up.

Be aware that you really need to follow ALL the instructions carefully, especially if you are going to use it with Plex, because you could potentially leave your server wide open for hackers if you skip steps. Don't say you weren't warned, and don't complain to me if things go wrong :)

With that out of the way, let's get started!

Preliminary steps

For this to work, you need to own a domain. How to get and set up a (free) domain is explained in detail in Part 1 of Creating a website on your VPS.

You don't need to follow that tutorial, but it is important to note that Freenom is very strict in their rules - they will delete your free domain if it doesn't point to a proper website (yes, that happened to me too). If for some reason you don't want a website, or can't set one up, your best option is to purchase a domain elsewhere (cost is around $10/year).

If you are using Freenom, you will need to point your naked/main domain (such as techperpexed.ga and/or www.techperplexed.ga) to an actual website, and then create the Plex server under a subdomain such as plex.techperplexed.ga.

It's probably easiest if you add a subdomain for Plex in your Freenom client area, see below.

Keep your client area open, you'll need to make more changes soon.

Setting up CloudFlare

In a new browser tab, create a free account with CloudFlare.

Click "Add Site", then type in your website and click "Begin Scan".

After the scan is complete, it should display a list of your imported records. If not, you will need to add them manually (in this case, create an A record with the name "plex" and point it to your VPS IP address).

Before you click "Continue", make sure all fields are gray except the subdomain you plan to use for Plex (once you verify things work, please make sure you change this later, but for now we don't want to complicate things). Just clicking the orange cloud should make it gray.

All set? Click "Continue". In the next step, I suggest you tick "Free Website" (unless you have money burning in your pocket), then click "Continue".

Next, you will be asked to change your nameservers. Make sure you make note of the exact two names you were given.

Now, go back to the client area of your domain provider. In the case of Freenom, click Manage Domain, Management Tools and select Nameservers.

Tick "Use custom nameservers (enter below)". Then change the first two lines with the information CloudFlare gave you, and remove line 3 and line 4. Then click "Change Nameservers".

Now, you may need to wait an hour or so for your service to propagate properly. Then, check CloudFlare. When you click "Overview", you should see if your status is set to "Active".

Before you exit the website, you will need to change two more things. First, click Crypto and make sure SSL is set to Full.

Next, click "Caching" and then click "Purge Everything" to start with a completely clean slate.

You can now click away your browser sessions and you can continue with Part 2 - Using CloudFlare with Plex.

Part 5 - Let's encrypt!

2017-12-13T11:03:00.000-07:00

You finished Part 4 - Installing Wordpress and you have your website, but it's not as safe as it should be - potential hackers could intercept your data.

This is probably not a problem for a very small website just displaying some information, but it will be if you run a web store that takes credit card payments, or a site that collects other sensitive information.

Any computer in between you and the server can see your credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, and other sensitive information if it is not encrypted with an SSL certificate. When an SSL certificate is used, the information becomes unreadable to everyone except for the server you are sending the information to.

Luckily, there is a service available that will secure your site for free.

Make sure you are logged into PuTTY with your own username.

Installing Certbot

Let's install the service first:

sudo apt-get update

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot

Hit Enter to continue, then

sudo apt-get install python-certbot-apache

Then type Y to continue. Now all that's left is we need to create a certificate for each of your sites:

sudo certbot --apache

Type your email when asked for one.
Type A to agree.
Choose whether you agree to share your email address with the EFF (that is entirely your choice).

You will be presented with a list of the domains and subdomains that you want to activate:

If you leave the choice blank and hit Enter, all your domains will be activated - otherwise choose which domain you want an SSL certificate for.

If all goes well, you will be presented with a choice if you want to enforce encryption. This is usually the most prudent choice, so let's select 2.

Your certificate(s) should be created now.

Renewing certificate

Your "letsencypt.org" certificate is set to self destruct after three months, all we need to do now is create a cron job to auto renew it when the time comes. First, go into root mode:

sudo -s

Then create a cron job:

crontab -e

Scroll to the bottom of the file and add:

0 2 * * Wed /usr/bin/letsencrypt renew >> /var/log/letsencrypt-renew.log

This will check every Wednesday at 2AM whether your certificate is up for renewal, and will do so when possible. Finally, type

exit

Congratulations, you are now on a fully secure server!

Part 4 - Installing WordPress

2017-10-14T16:33:00.003-07:00

Now that you finished Part 3 - Prerequisites to setup your domain, you have a working website and sub domain, each with a page you created on your own. But you want more than just a welcome message, right?

You could manually create your web pages and then use FTP to upload your files to your server, but why should you do all this hard work when there are so many open source CMS systems available in which you can create a versatile site in minutes.

For this tutorial, I have picked Wordpress. WordPress is lean and clean, looks gorgeous and is very easy to use. Not for nothing is it the most used content management system on earth!

Creating the database

To begin, log into MySQL:

mysql -u root -p

You will be prompted for the MySQL root user's password that you configured in Part 2.

Once you see the "mysql" prompt, we can create the database and user. Follow these instructions to create the database:

CREATE DATABASE wpdb;

Next we'll create a user and a password.

CREATE USER 'wpuser' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

Change password to a strong password, and as always, make sure you store it somewhere safe!
Next, grant the user permissions:

GRANT ALL ON wpdb.* TO 'wpuser';

Now, we can exit our interactive MySQL session:

exit

You will be dropped back into your bash session.

Installing WordPress

Installing the latest version of WordPress is easy. Follow these instructions:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/

cd /tmp && wget -c http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz

sudo rsync -avP ~/wordpress/* /var/www/subdomain

In the example above, I have chosen to install WordPress on my demo site, but you can choose your main domain if you wish.

Let's clean up our downloads:

rm latest.tar.gz -r wordpress

Now let's configure WordPress to work with our database:

cd /var/www/subdomain

sudo mv wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

Now we need to enter the database details we created above into the config file:

sudo nano wp-config.php

Find the following lines and change the parts in bold to look like this:

define('DB_NAME', 'wpdb');
. . .
define('DB_USER', 'wpuser');
. . .
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password);

Change the line in red to the password you chose for your WordPress database a few lines above (not the MySQL root password). Mine looks like this:

Finally, let's restart the services.

sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

sudo systemctl restart mysql.service

You can click away PuTTY now, there is nothing more we need to do there.

Accessing WordPress

Visit the link where you installed WordPress.

You will see your brand new site and fill out the details. One tip: WordPress generates a random password for your new site user - make sure you either write that down, or change it to your own.

There is nothing to stop you from installing WordPress on both your domain and subdomain, or use the subdomain for a forum, help site, web store or anything you wish... the possibilities are endless.

You can now proceed to Part 5 - Let's Encrypt! for the final touches.

Part 3 - Prerequisites to setup your domain

2017-10-14T16:01:00.000-07:00

Now that you finished Part 2 - Installing Linux Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) on your VPS, technically you already have a working website.

However, looking at a standard Apache landing page is hardly invigorating. We want to be creating our own site - or sites - you can have as many as you want!

In Part 1, we set up our domain and one subdomain (which I named demo). This means that after we finish this tutorial, we will have two separate websites under one domain. Let's get things ready for both sites.

Creating the directory structure

In Ubuntu, the standard location for storing websites is /var/www. This will contain one folder for each of your websites.

At any point in time you can list which folders you have added (with "ls" you can list the contents of any folder):

ls /var/www

Right now only the default site is listed as the folder "html".

For your main site, create a folder that describes its purpose the best. In my case, I went with techmain. It doesn't matter what you name your folder, no one will ever see it except you. Some prefer to use their domain url instead of a description. There is no right or wrong here!

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/maindomain

We need to create a separate folder for our subdomain (or for any site you add in the future). Again, keep it as descriptive as possible, such as the purpose or url of your subdomain. In my case I wanted a demo subdomain, so I chose techdemo. Again, it does not matter what name you choose - as long as it makes sense to you and you keep your naming consistent throughout.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/subdomain

Now we have the directory structure for our files, but they are owned by our root user. Instead, we want yoursiteusername to own the sites. Make sure you are logged in as user that is going to maintain the site, then type:

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/

Next, we want the public to be able to view our websites:

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www

Now all our sites should be visible to the world - but wait, there is still more to do.

Virtual host file for the main domain

We now need to create a virtual host file for our domains and subdomains. Create a new file:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/domain.conf

For your hostname you can pick any name you want, because only you will ever see it. It would make sense to use your domain name. I named mine techperplexed.conf.

Paste the following:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName techperplexed.ga
Redirect 301 / http://www.techperplexed.ga
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.techperplexed.ga
DocumentRoot /var/www/maindomain
</VirtualHost>

Replace all the parts in red to reflect your own domain name and the folder where your site is located.

If you are going to add a subdomain, keep this file open. Otherwise, save with Ctrl-O, Enter and exit with Ctrl-X.

Virtual host file for the subdomain

Now we need to do the same for the subdomain. Later, you can add other domains or additional subdomains in the same way.

Your virtual host file should still be open, use your arrow keys to scroll to the bottom. Then add the following lines:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName demo.techperplexed.ga
DocumentRoot /var/www/subdomain
</VirtualHost>

Obviously you need to change the parts in red to reflect the subdomain you chose in Part 1!

This is what my host file looks like:

Save your file with Ctrl-O, Enter and exit with Ctrl-X.

Enabling host file

Enable your host file:

sudo a2ensite domain.conf

Enable mod_rewrite (needed for many packages):

sudo a2enmod rewrite

Lastly, now that we have our own, we can disable the default host file:

sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf

Restart Apache to reload the settings:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

We're almost there!

Creating demo pages

Before we delve into creating "real" websites, we should really check if everything went well so far.

To do this, we shall create a demo page for each of our sites.

nano /var/www/maindomain/index.php

Edit the name to match your own folder name for your main site, but you know that by now of course. Then paste:

<html>
<head>
<title>Test site</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Well done! Your maindomain website is working!</h1>
</body>
</html>

Save with Ctrl-O, Enter and exit with Ctrl-X.

Do the same with the subdomain:

nano /var/www/subdomain/index.php

Paste the following content:

<html>
<head>
<title>Test site</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Well done! Your subdomain website is working!</h1>
</body>
</html>

Save with Ctrl-O, Enter and exit with Ctrl-X.

You can now visit the link to your domain (with the above setup, both techperplexed.ga and www.techperplexed.ga link to my main site) and your subdomain (e.g. demo.techperplexed.ga). If all went well, in all cases you should see a big

Well done!

Well done indeed! On to Part 4 - Installing WordPress to set up your own site.

Part 2 - Installing Linux Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) on your VPS

2017-10-14T15:52:00.001-07:00

In Part 1 - Creating a website on your VPS we learned about the possibility of setting up a website on our VPS.

You have your VPS set up properly and you registered a domain.

New site user

In order to keep our website privileges separate from Plex, we could create a new user for maintaining the website. You can skip this if you want to use your regular Plex user, but for added security I would definitely recommend creating a separate user.

First, start a PuTTY session and login as yourusername that you created in Part 2 of the Plex tutorial (in that tutorial we used plexuser).

If you want to keep using that account for your website, you can skip to the next subheading (Install LAMP and allow in firewall). If you prefer to create a new user, read on.

You will need to switch to root:

sudo -s

Think of a username you want to use for your site maintainance. Then type:

adduser yoursiteusername

Where yoursiteusername is the name you are going to use to maintain your site. I picked siteuser as my username.

Follow the prompts as you did before, then give your user sudo privileges:

usermod -aG sudo yoursiteusername

Then enter

sudo visudo

Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to scroll to the bottom and add on a new line:

yoursiteusername ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL

You will now have two users added to this file. It will look like this:

Save this file by hitting Ctrl-O, then Enter. Exit the editor by hitting Ctrl-X.

Exit the terminal now (just close the PuTTY window) and log back in with your brand new username and password. Make sure you see your newly created user before the green prompt, instead of your Plex user.

Install LAMP and allow in firewall

Let's install Linux Apache, MySQP and PHP (in case you wondered what LAMP stood for, well, now you saw the light). Type

sudo apt-get update

Wait for the prompt to come back, then type

sudo apt-get install lamp-server^

Answer "Y" to the question if you want to continue. Then hit Enter several times to finish the installation.

When done, we need to edit the config file:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Then scroll to the bottom of the file and add on a new line:

ServerName yournewdomain

Of course you need to replace yournewdomain with the one you registered in part 1.

I registered techperplexed.ga, so mine looks like this:

Save with Ctrl-O, then Enter. Exit with Ctrl-X.

Lastly, we'll adjust our firewall to allow Apache:

sudo ufw allow in "Apache Full"

Reload Apache:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

At this point, you should already be able to visit your brand new website and admire the default page.

So far, so good!

Configuring MySQL

We're not finished yet... MySQL is a dangerous tool in the hands of the wrong person, so first thing we'll do is secure it.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

It will ask you for a root password, but just press Enter - we haven't got a root password yet.

Next it will ask you if you want to set a root password, answer "Y". Use a password generator to create a really long, difficult and random password. Make sure you store it somewhere safe, you will need this password again in Part 4 and every time you need to perform database maintenance.

Type "Y" for removing anonymous users, "Y" for disallowing root login remotely, "Y" for removing the test database and "Y" for reloading the privilege tables. Pfew! We're safe!

You can now continue with Part 3 - Prerequisites to setup your domain.

Part 1 - Creating a website on your VPS

2017-10-14T15:11:00.000-07:00

If you have followed my Infinite Plex tutorial, you are now in the possession of a VPS powerful enough for just about any task.

What else can you do with it except host Plex? Well... most people use their VPS to host a website, or even several sites.

With the knowledge you already gained from setting up your VPS, adding a site will be a breeze! And it need not cost anything extra.

Things you need:

A VPS of your choice.
A domain: we're going with a free domain for this tutorial.
A website: you will learn how to setup WordPress as your content management system.

Once you have WordPress installed, you can use your imagination and create any site you wish - WordPress is no longer only for blogs!

VPS

If you already have a VPS for Plex, it will be powerful enough for just about any site. If you don't have a VPS yet, check Lowendbox for VPS offers as affordable as $10/year. For a low usage website you won't need to go all out just yet - you can always upgrade later.

You can even get a completely free VPS from Google. It is beyond the scope of this guide to explain exactly how that works, but keep it in mind in case you ever need one.

Before you proceed, it is vital that you finish Part 1 and Part 2 of the Plex tutorial first so that your basics are covered. You can skip the cloud setup if you don't need unlimited storage for Plex. In that case you can skip requesting and enabling FUSE as well. Done? Ok, then let's start!

Registering a domain

You can go all out and register any domain with any provider you want, but for the sake of this tutorial, I went with a free version.

The best place to get a free domain is Freenom. Think of a catchy name, then click "Check Availability". I don't think there is any limit to the amount of domains you can register, but I won't be greedy, one is enough for now. Tech makes me say "GAH" a lot, so techperplexed.ga it is!

Once you click "Checkout" you will be presented with the period you want to register the domain for. Up to 12 months is free... so go for it! You will receive a reminder when the domain is due for renewal, then you can add another 12 months for free - if you keep renewing, the domain can be yours forever.

Finish the registration until you see the confirmation.

You are invited to "Click here to go to your Client Area", so let's do that.

Pointing the domain to the VPS

Click "Services" in the top menu, then "My Domains".

You will see the domain(s) you have registered here. Next, click "Manage Domain".

Under "Management Tools", click "Nameservers".

Make sure "Use default nameservers" is ticked and click "Change Nameservers".

Lastly, we need to point our domain to our VPS. You already entered the IP address of your VPS in PuTTY, so either check PuTTY, or the client area of your VPS provider.

Copy the IP address of your VPS, then in the Freenom client area click "Manage Freenom DNS".

Here you add your website, as well as any subdomains you wish to utilize (don't worry, I'll explain all that later). You can always change this later, but for now, follow these instructions exactly.

Click "More Records" twice so that you have a total of three rows, like the screenshot below.

Under "Name", leave the first field empty. Type "www" in the second row.

The third field is optional and you can always change this later. You can have any subdomain you want - I picked "demo" for demonstration purposes only.

In all three cases, keep "Type" as "A" and TTL to the default 14440.
Don't forget to paste your own VPS IP address in all three rows under "Target"!

Click "Save Changes" and click away your browser for now.

We can now move on to Part 2 - Installing Linux Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) on your VPS.

Part 6 - Making it all come together

2017-04-14T18:43:00.001-07:00

Well done, after finishing Part 5 - Mounting the drive(s) you are ready to roll!

But, wait, isn't there a lot more to do? No... not really. You can now visit https://app.plex.tv/web - your brand new Plex server will be there. Bet you didn't know it would be this easy, did you?

Now I'm not going to teach you how to set up Plex, there is ample information on the Plex website for that. What you do need to know though is where to find your content.

So let's add a library and click "Browse for Media Folder".

You will see the services you created on the left hand side of your selection. If you just want to use Rclone, all you need to do is click Plex and add the folder(s) of your choice to your library.

That's all... You can stop sweating and start watching as soon as Plex has finished scanning your content!

Wait, before you go. The following sections are optional... but I found those make my Plex life a lot easier.

Creating a backup

Once the Plex server is installed, all content is scanned, your plugins are running and history is being made what has been watched and what not, the most scary part is losing everything in a crash. Don't think it can't happen... even with my very reliable provider I once experienced a corrupted server instance - and I had to start from scratch again.

Luckily, thanks to my good friend "kelinger" (who provided most of the scripts presented in this tutorial, my eternal gratitude to him!), I now have a backup script that I run once a week to make sure that whenever I need to reinstall Plex, it will be up and running in a matter of hours - even in case I ever decide to switch providers.

Note: for this script it is vital that Rclone is correctly configured (this is covered in part 4 of this tutorial).

Creating the script directory (only if you haven't created it yet):

mkdir ~/bin

The backup script:

nano ~/bin/plex-backup

Paste the following:

#!/bin/bash
sudo service plexmediaserver stop
sudo -s tar -cvjf /tmp/$(hostname).$(date +%F).tar.bz2 /var/lib/plexmediaserver
sudo service plexmediaserver start
sudo rclone copy /tmp/$(hostname).* Gdrive:/Backup -v --checksum --drive-chunk-size=64M
sudo rm /tmp/$(hostname).*

Save with Ctrl-O, Enter, then Ctrl-X.

This will create a dated backup of your Plex server and copy it to a folder named "Backup" in Google. You can edit the part in red to upload to any folder you wish. Make sure you create this folder on your cloud service before the first backup!

Make the script executable:

chmod +x ~/bin/plex-backup

You can run the script whenever you want by typing "plexbackup". Important: your server will be unavailable during the backup process.

If you wish to make this an automatic weekly event, type the following command:

crontab -e

If you are asked which editor you want to use, choose 2 to select the nano editor. Scroll to the bottom and add a new line:

15 1 * * Sun /home/plexuser/bin/plex-backup > /dev/null 2>&1

Change plexuser to your own of course. Save with Ctrl-O, Enter, then Ctrl-X.

In the example above, the backup will run every Sunday morning at 1:15am. If you want to edit the schedule to suit your own, search for "cron job scheduling", there is ample information available on the Internet how to adapt this to your own wishes.

Note: the name of the backup file is based on the Hostname of your server. This is set in the client area of your VPS provider's website.

You can change the name there if you wish. I named mine Plex, but if you gave yours a different name, your backup files will be named accordingly. If you run multiple Plex servers, you will always know which backup belongs to which server.

Restoring a backup

It happened... you lost your server, and now you need to restore the backup.

First of all, follow parts 1 to 5 of this tutorial (and the switch script of part 6, if you are using that). That means you now have a Plex "vanilla" server including your mounted drive(s), just as you had before. There is no need to recreate your libraries or install any plugins, the backup took care of that.

We'll place the restore files in the tmp directory. Advantage is after a reboot, all superfluous files will be gone automatically - which is exactly what you want!

Visit your Google Drive folder and review your backup files. If you have been creating backups regularly, there might be quite a few! Check the exact date of the file you want to restore.

Type

mkdir /tmp/restore

Then

sudo rclone copy Gdrive:/Backup/$(hostname).2017-06-25.tar.bz2 /tmp --checksum --drive-chunk-size=64M -v

If you are using another backup folder in Google Drive, edit the first part in red. The second red part should reflect the exact date of the file you want to restore.

This could take a few minutes, depending on the size of your Plex database and the download speed. Then type

tar -xvf /tmp/$(hostname).2017-06-25.tar.bz2 -C /tmp/restore

Again, make sure to enter the exact name and date of the file. This too will take a little while to finish.

Type the following commands one by one:

sudo service plexmediaserver stop

sudo mv /var/lib/plexmediaserver /var/lib/plexmediaserver-vanilla

sudo mv /tmp/restore/var/lib/plexmediaserver /var/lib/

sudo chown -R plex:plex /var/lib/plexmediaserver

Wait for the prompt to come back, this may take a minute.

sudo service plexmediaserver start

Check if your server is restored and working fine... then you can delete the old files:

sudo rm -r /var/lib/plexmediaserver-vanilla

sudo rm -r /tmp/restore

sudo rm /tmp/$(hostname).*

Your Plex server is now restored to the date you created your backup.

Creating a switch script

Now that Rclone is every bit as good as Plexdrive, the switch script has become a legacy feature. You may still use it of course, but it's no longer necessary. If you are setting up a new server, you can safely skip this section.

What if you can't choose between Rclone and Plexdrive, or if you want to be able to switch seamlessly between the two? With this switch script, your content is always mounted in the same location - and the beauty is you can add other cloud and/or mount services whenever you wish!

You will need to be logged into PuTTY as your user. Creating the script directory (only if you haven't created it yet):

mkdir ~/bin

Then the script itself:

nano ~/bin/switch

Paste the following:

#!/bin/bash
OPTION=${1}
case "${OPTION}" in
[12])
echo Stopping services
sudo service plexmediaserver stop
sudo rm /home/Plex
;;&
1)
echo Making Plex use Rclone
sudo ln -s /media/Plex /home/Plex
;;&
2)
echo Making Plex use Plexdrive
sudo ln -s /media/Plexdrive /home/Plex
;;&
[12])
echo Starting services
sudo service plexmediaserver start
;;&
[012])
echo Plex is using $(readlink /home/Plex)
exit 0
;;
esac
echo Usage:
echo " ${0} [0|1|2]"
echo " 0 = Show current Plex drive mapping"
echo " 1 = Switch Plex to use Rclone for streaming"
echo " 2 = Switch Plex to use Plexdrive for streaming"
exit 1

Save with Ctrl-O, Enter, then Ctrl-X. Make the script executable:

chmod +x ~/bin/switch

Now all you have to do is type "switch 1" to switch to Rclone, or "switch 2" to switch to Plexdrive. Typing "switch 0" will show you which drive is currently mounted.

Once this is done and you selected your mounted drive, you will need to point your Plex libraries to the new location.

Instead of picking either Plexdrive or Gdrive, select the "slash forward" / and then click "home":

Click Plex and from there, select your content.

You only need to set all your libraries once... no matter how many changes you make to your cloud services. This script is quite future proof!

Bonus 1: Rclone update script

This is a script to quickly update Rclone to the latest version. It is not vital to install, but it makes it easy to switch between Rclone's release and beta without any hassle.

Creating the script directory (only if you haven't created it yet):

mkdir ~/bin

To create the script:

nano ~/bin/rclone-update

Copy and paste the following:

#!/bin/bash
# Rclone updater
cd /tmp
if [[ ${1} = 'beta' ]]
then
curl -O https://beta.rclone.org/rclone-beta-latest-linux-amd64.zip > /dev/null 2>&1
unzip rclone-beta-latest-linux-amd64.zip > /dev/null 2>&1
else
curl -O https://downloads.rclone.org/rclone-current-linux-amd64.zip > /dev/null 2>&1
unzip rclone-current-linux-amd64.zip > /dev/null 2>&1
fi
cd rclone-*-linux-amd64
A=$(sudo rclone --version)
B=$(sudo ./rclone --version)
if [[ ${A} = ${B} ]]
then
echo ${A} is already current
else
echo Installing new ${B}
#stop services
sudo service plexmediaserver stop
sudo service rclone stop
sudo service plexdrive stop
#update rclone
sudo cp rclone /usr/sbin/
sudo chown root:root /usr/sbin/rclone
sudo chmod 755 /usr/sbin/rclone
#install manpage
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/share/man/man1
sudo cp rclone.1 /usr/local/share/man/man1/
sudo mandb > /dev/null 2>&1
#start services
sudo service rclone start
sudo service plexdrive start
sudo service plexmediaserver start
fi
cd /tmp
sudo rm -r rclone-*

If you did not install Plexdrive, remove the lines in red. Save with Ctrl-O, Enter, then Ctrl-X.

Make the script executable:

chmod +x ~/bin/rclone-update

All you need to do is type "rclone-update" to update Rclone to the latest release version, or "rclone-update beta" to update to the latest beta version.

Bonus 2: Plexdrive update script

This is a script to quickly update Plexdrive to the latest release. Due to a limitation of GitHub, it is currently only possible to update to a stable version.
Make sure you do research what changes you need to make to get a new stable version to work... this tutorial is based on version 5.0.0.

Creating the script directory (only if you haven't created it yet):

mkdir ~/bin

To create the script:

nano ~/bin/plexdrive-update

Copy and paste the following:

#!/bin/bash
# Plexdrive updater
cd /tmp
if [[ ${1} = 'beta' ]]
then
echo This script only supports updating to stable versions right now.
exit
else
sudo wget $(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/dweidenfeld/plexdrive/releases/latest | grep 'browser_' | cut -d\" -f4 | grep plexdrive-linux-amd64) -O plexdrive-linux-amd64 > /dev/null 2>&1
sudo mv plexdrive-linux-amd64 plexdrive
sudo chown root:root /tmp/plexdrive
sudo chmod 755 /tmp/plexdrive
fi
cd /usr/local/bin
A=$(plexdrive --version)
B=$(/tmp/plexdrive --version)
if [[ ${A} = ${B} ]]
then
echo ${A} is already current
else
echo Installing new ${B}
#stop services
sudo service plexmediaserver stop
sudo service rclone stop
sudo service plexdrive stop
#install plexdrive
sudo mv /tmp/plexdrive /usr/local/bin/
sudo chown root:root /usr/local/bin/plexdrive
sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/plexdrive
#start services
sudo service rclone start
sudo service plexdrive start
sudo service plexmediaserver start
fi
cd /tmp
sudo rm plexdrive 2> /dev/null

If you did not install Rclone, remove the lines in red. Save with Ctrl-O, Enter, then Ctrl-X.

Make the script executable:

chmod +x ~/bin/plexdrive-update

All you need to do is type "plexdrive-update" to update Plexdrive to the latest release version.

That's really all

Hope you enjoyed my tutorial on how to set up your own Plex server on a VPS with unlimited cloud storage to host your content. Don't hesitate to hit the comments, I'd love to hear if this helped you set up your own!

Part 5 - Mounting the drive(s)

2017-04-14T18:35:00.001-07:00

You made it up to here, you finished Part 4 - Setting up Rclone and/or Plexdrive and are still with it, congratulations! The hardest parts are done, it'll be downhill from now on. Promise!

We now need to mount our drive so that Plex can access it as if it is just one giant external drive.

Douglas Adams would have loved it!

Mounting the Google drive (Rclone)

You are probably still logged in with your plexuser account, which is exactly what we want.

Let's create the required folders first:

mkdir -p /home/plexuser/logs

mkdir -p /home/plexuser/uploads

Creating the mount script:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/rclone.service

Then paste (right click):

[Unit]
Description=Mount and cache Google drive to /media/Plex
After=syslog.target local-fs.target network.target
[Service]
Environment=RCLONEHOME=/home/plexuser/.config/rclone
Environment=MOUNTTO=/media/Plex
Environment=LOGS=/home/plexuser/logs
Environment=UPLOADS=/home/plexuser/uploads
Type=simple
User=root
ExecStartPre=/bin/mkdir -p ${MOUNTTO}
ExecStartPre=/bin/mkdir -p ${LOGS}
ExecStartPre=/bin/mkdir -p ${UPLOADS}
ExecStart=/usr/bin/rclone mount \
--rc \
--log-file ${LOGS}/rclone.log \
--log-level INFO \
--umask 022 \
--allow-non-empty \
--allow-other \
--fuse-flag sync_read \
--tpslimit 10 \
--tpslimit-burst 10 \
--dir-cache-time=160h \
--buffer-size=64M \
--attr-timeout=1s \
--vfs-read-chunk-size=2M \
--vfs-read-chunk-size-limit=2G \
--vfs-cache-max-age=5m \
--vfs-cache-mode=writes \
--cache-dir ${UPLOADS} \
--config ${RCLONEHOME}/rclone.conf \
Gdrive: ${MOUNTTO}
ExecStop=/bin/fusermount -u -z ${MOUNTTO}
ExecStop=/bin/rmdir ${MOUNTTO}
Restart=always
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Of course you will need to replace all instances of plexuser with your own username.

When you are done, save the file by typing Ctrl-O, Enter to save, then Ctrl-X to exit.

You will need to enable the service. Type

sudo systemctl enable rclone.service

Reload the service so it'll work:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

If you don't plan on installing Plexdrive, then you will need to reboot your server now. Type

sudo reboot

You may need to wait a few seconds for the server to be back online again... just enough time to grab another cup of coffee. You deserve a break.

If you only wish to use Rclone and if you rebooted, just click away the PuTTY session (it has become unresponsive anyway). You are done now and you can proceed to Part 6 - Making it all come together.

If however you are planning to add Plexdrive, read on.

Mounting Plexdrive

Only follow these instructions if you are installing Plexdrive - which is now a legacy feature (Rclone is just as good now).

Make sure you are logged into PuTTY with your own username. First, let's create the mount directory:

sudo mkdir /media/Plexdrive

To speed up the installation a bit, create a screen session so that we can proceed while Plexdrive is creating the cache. Type

screen -S plexdrive

This will open a new session which we can place in the background later to continue setting things up. Type

sudo plexdrive mount -c /root/.plexdrive -o allow_other -v 2 /media/Plexdrive

You will be asked to provide your generated client ID. This is the Google client ID you created in part 4. Remember how I asked you to keep the browser open? The codes are probably still sitting on your screen. Paste it using right click, then hit Enter.

Do the same with the generated client secret, again this is the client secret you created in part 4 and that is still on your browser screen. If you had closed your browser after all, head back to https://console.developers.google.com, click "Credentials", and click "Edit" behind the API you created. This will show you the OAuth information again.

You will now be asked to paste a link in your browser. Use your mouse to select the entire link (see screenshot below). DO NOT TYPE CTRL-C!!! Just selecting it will copy the link.

Paste this link in your PC browser. You are asked to authorize Google drive and will be given an authorization code. Paste the code in PuTTY (right click!).

If all goes well, Plexdrive will start generating the cache. This will take a long time, but thanks to the separate screen we do not have to wait till it is completely finished. I do suggest waiting a few minutes until it mentions that it finished the initial scanning.

Once the cache creating process slows down to 1 or 2 items at the time, you can safely detach the screen to proceed with the following steps. To detach from the screen press Ctrl-A, then the letter D.

Once you are back on your main screen (placing the cache process in the background), type

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/plexdrive.service

In the nano text editor paste the following lines:

[Unit]
Description=Mount Plexdrive to /media/Plexdrive
After=syslog.target local-fs.target network.target
[Service]
Type=simple
User=root
ExecStartPre=-/bin/mkdir -p /media/Plexdrive
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/plexdrive mount \
-c /root/.plexdrive \
-o allow_other \
/media/Plexdrive
ExecStop=/bin/fusermount -u -z /media/Plexdrive
ExecStop=/bin/rmdir /media/Plexdrive
Restart=always
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Save with Ctrl-O, Enter, then Ctrl-X. You will need to enable the service. Type

sudo systemctl enable plexdrive.service

Reload the service so it'll work:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Time to check our caching process! Go back to the screen you placed in the background:

screen -r plexdrive

I did not find it necessary to wait till the entire scanning process was done. Once mine slowed down to one or two items at the time, I found I could reboot safely and let the service take over. First detach your screen (Ctrl-A, D), then reboot.

sudo reboot

Click away the PuTTY session, it has become unresponsive.

We're almost there! All that needs to be done now is Part 6 - Making it all come together.

Part 4 - Setting up Rclone and/or Plexdrive

2017-04-14T14:50:00.002-07:00

Now that you finished Part 3 - Install and configure Plex, we're halfway there... keep with it!

This part will discuss both Rclone and Plexdrive. I highly recommend installing both, as both have their strengths and weaknesses!

Installing Rclone

You can skip this part if you only wish to use Plexdrive, but I strongly recommend you follow these steps anyway. Rclone is more versatile than Plexdrive and it is still needed to perform certain tasks, such as the backup script covered in part 6 of this tutorial.

Installing Rclone itself is the easiest part. You don't even need to understand what is happening. After you have followed these steps to the letter, Rclone will be installed.

I suggest you start a new session in PuTTY (select your saved session and click "Open", then log in with plexuser (or the name you picked for yourself) so that we are no longer in local mode.

Copy and paste the following line:

curl https://rclone.org/install.sh | sudo bash

That's all, Rclone is installed and ready to run!

Configuring Rclone with Google

You didn't think everything would be this easy, right? No, the hard part is still to come. Now we need to configure Rclone, which is a bit of a task because on our PuTTY terminal, we have no browser available. Not to worry, with a bit of work, your own local computer will come to the rescue.

In the PuTTY terminal, type

sudo rclone config

You will be presented with a choice, type the letter n for "New remote" and hit the Enter key.

This tutorial will cover Google Drive, which is by far the most popular service. If you have signed up for another cloud service, check the Rclone website how to set that up.

You are asked to give a name. For this tutorial to work properly, please make sure you type:

Gdrive

Notice the capital G in Gdrive - Linux is picky about these things. Again, to avoid problems, you should not deviate from this (unless you exactly know what you're doing, but then you probably wouldn't be following this guide).

Check which option mentions Google Drive "drive" in the list (in the latest version this is #11), so type 11 and Enter.

Leave client_id> blank, just Enter.
Leave client_secret> blank as well, just Enter.

Scope that Rclone should use> 1 (full access)

ID of root folder> blank, just Enter
Service account files> again leave blank, just Enter.

Type the letter n for No, you don't want to use auto config and Enter.

You'll get a message that if your browser doesn't open, you will need to copy and paste the following link. You will need to place the entire link in a block by dragging your mouse (see screenshot below). Do not hit Ctrl-C - remember, this is PuTTY - dragging the mouse and placing the link in a block means it's copied.

Go to your local browser and paste the link. You will be asked to log into Google and accept authorization. You will then be given a code to paste in PuTTY.

Paste the code (right click), hit Enter.

Next you will be asked if you want to configure it as a team drive. Unless you know exactly what this means, type n - you don't want it.

Finally type y that Yes, all is okay and then q to Quit config.

You should see both drives in your list of current remotes:

You can skip the next part if you only wish to use Rclone and head straight over to Part 5 - Mounting the drive(s).

Rclone Cache

With the newly introduced Rclone VFS feature, Rclone Cache has been deprecated. VFS is better in just about every way!

Plexdrive API

With the new Rclone cache feature, I found Plexdrive no longer necessary. I'll leave the instructions in the tutorial as a legacy, but honestly, you don't have to bother any longer... Rclone is just as good now.

It is noteworthy that Plexdrive only works with Google. First, you need your own API credentials. Open your browser and visit
https://console.developers.google.com

Select Dashboard and click "Enable API"

Under G Suite APIs select "Drive API".

Click "Enable".

Then click "Credentials".

Before you can proceed with creating the API, you are nagged to "Configure consent screen", so click that.

Type a description ("Plex" would do) and hit "Save".

Click "Create credentials" and select "OAuth client ID".

Select "Other" under Application type and give your API an appropriate name, such as Plex. Then click "Create".

You will be given your own client ID and client secret.

Please leave the browser open (you will need these credentials soon) and open a new browser tab.

Getting Plexdrive ready

To install the latest (as of this writing) version of Plexdrive, in your PuTTY window type:

cd /tmp && wget https://github.com/dweidenfeld/plexdrive/releases/download/5.0.0/plexdrive-linux-amd64

You can check the GitHub page to see if there is a newer version, or use the update script in part 6.

Type the following commands one by one to move the file to a convenient location and give it the proper permissions.

sudo mv plexdrive-linux-amd64 plexdrive

sudo mv plexdrive /usr/local/bin/

sudo chown root:root /usr/local/bin/plexdrive

sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/plexdrive

cd ~

Well done! You have successfully installed Rclone and/or Plexdrive, which means you are ready for Part 5 - Mounting the drive(s).

Part 3 - Install and configure Plex

2017-04-14T12:47:00.000-07:00

Finished Part 2 - Configuring Ubuntu? Then you can proceed with the installation of Plex itself. Thanks to an awesome script that is available for free, this is going to be a breeze.

We now need to restart PuTTY in localhost mode to set up the Plex server using our local browser.

Open a new terminal window, select your saved Plex session and click "Load".

Don't click "Open" yet, first, look for Connection in the menu on the left hand side, open up SSH and click "Tunnels".

In the field behind Source port type: 32400
In the field behind Destination type: localhost:32400
Click "Add".

Now click "Open".

You can now login as your newly created plexuser.

Installing Plex

To install Plex, type (copy/paste):

bash -c "$(wget -qO - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mrworf/plexupdate/master/extras/installer.sh)"

All in one line (you may need to scroll horizontally). If you are asked to enter your password, then this is not your Plex password, but the password you chose for plexuser in Linux.

Type the letter y to proceed with the installation, then hit Enter to agree to the default location "/opt/plexupdate".

You will be asked if you want to install the latest PlexPass releases. Important: answer y ONLY if you own a PlexPass, otherwise type n. I have a PlexPass, so I entered y.

If you choose y you will need to provide your Plex credentials. Enter your Plex e-mail address and Plex password.

Follow the rest of the prompts. I chose y when asked if I want to install the latest updates whenever they are released and y to check if the server is in use before upgrading,

Hit the Enter key twice when presented with the DNS/IP name and server port, 127.0.0.1 and 32400 are both correct.

I chose y to set up automatic daily updates for Plex.

Choose y that you wish to continue.

I chose n that I do not wish to run syslog, and n that I don't want to receive an email if an update is available.

Lastly, make sure you choose y that you want to run the Plex update right now.

Congratulations, Plex is installed!

If you ever need to make chances to this configuration, type

/opt/plexupdate/extras/installer.sh

This will run all options again and update the configuration with your new choices. Don't click away PuTTY, we're not done yet.

Getting Plex to run

Leave the terminal open on your desktop and open your local computer browser.

Visit this link:

http://127.0.0.1:32400/web

If all goes well, you will be presented with a Plex login screen. You're doing fantastic!

Sign in with your Plex credentials, or create a new account if you are new to Plex. Continue clicking "Next" until you get the Plex main page.

Later we'll finish setting up the server, but before we proceed there is one more thing to do. Make sure your Plex server is available at https://app.plex.tv. If it is, click the Settings button (top right), click "Server", then "Remote Access".

Make sure you see "Fully accessible outside your network" in green.

Perfect, Plex is installed properly and we're ready for Part 4 - Setting up Rclone and/or Plexdrive.

Part 2 - Configuring Ubuntu

2017-04-14T11:58:00.001-07:00

You have completed all the steps in Part 1 - Creating an infinite Plex server using a VPS and a cloud service.

We're now ready to configure Ubuntu so that it will work with Plex and your mounted Google drive.

Change root password

The root password you were provided with is probably not all that strong, and for an added layer of security you should change it. I suggest you use a password generator to create a really long 20 character super difficult password. Make sure it's stored somewhere safe. You will not need during the installation of Plex, but you may need it again in the future.

Here's mine: 5ehMN&7cQY*#yJZnAaNp. Notice it is 20 characters long, completely random, contains capital letters, small letters, numbers and symbols. Now that is a strong password!

You are still logged in as root on PuTTY. In the terminal, type

passwd

Then paste (right click) your generated password, hit Enter, and paste it a second time.

If all goes well, it will tell you that your password was updated successfully.

Again, make sure your new password is stored in a safe place!

Installing updates and some vital packages

Next, we'll perform a few necessary updates and installations. You can type these commands manually, or if you're lazy like me, just copy and paste them from the browser here (Ctrl-C) into the PuTTY terminal (right click).

First, let's update Ubuntu with all the latest patches and updates. Type (or copy/paste):

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Sit back and relax while Linux flashes by lots of yakkety yak until it pauses and asks if you accept the additional disk space used. Type y and Enter.

After much more gobbledygook it'll probably pause on a blue screen. Ignore the warning by hitting Enter.

This time it'll probably finish and you'll see the green prompt again. If at some point in the future you get the message that there are packages that can be updated, run

sudo apt full-upgrade

We shall now install Fail2ban to prevent hackers from trying to get into your system. Enter

sudo apt-get install fail2ban

Agree to the installation (y, Enter). If the above command isn't displayed in one single line (depending on your browser settings), make sure you copy everything. Each time you see a text box containing a > this will mean you'll need to enter the entire code in PuTTY.

Go have a cup of coffee, talk a bit to a friend and come back after one hour. Then type

sudo cat /var/log/fail2ban.log

This will tell you the amount of hackers that tried to get into your system... yes... I was shocked too. At least we're protected now against brute force attacks.

Now we're going to install some packages that you need later. First we need the "GNU nano" text editor:

sudo apt-get install nano

Some newer versions of Linux don't include unzip or curl out of the box, let's install those just in case:

sudo apt-get install unzip

Follow the prompts, depending on whether it was installed already or not. Curl is needed for some scripts:

sudo apt install curl

We also need to install FUSE, the package you asked your provider to enable.

sudo apt-get install fuse

Type y to continue. If at this point you get an error, you may need to contact your provider to enable FUSE, and wait for them to get back to you that it's done. You can't complete your installation until they have enabled it.

Depending on where your VPS server is, the time might be different from your local timezone. This would throw off your planned server maintenance / Plex downtime and other cron jobs. There is an easy fix for that:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Then select the area and time zone where you live.

Getting the firewall ready for Plex

We want Plex to be able to talk to the world, and you to be able to talk to your VPS. All other communications (hacker attempts!) are unwelcome. For added security, we will enable the firewall and create an exception for Plex. Type (or copy/paste) the following lines:

sudo apt-get install ufw

sudo ufw default deny incoming

sudo ufw default allow outgoing

sudo ufw allow ssh

sudo ufw allow 32400

Your firewall is now ready for Plex.

You can add other exceptions as needed. For example, if you plan to install trakt.tv later, you will need to add this line:

sudo ufw allow 33400

It's always best practise to only open the ports you will actually need. Then enable the firewall:

sudo ufw enable

Then type y to confirm the command.

Create another Linux user

Linux is very security minded, and you should perform most tasks under a separate user, not root. It is an added layer of security and also makes things easier in the long run when you need to perform maintenance. Think of a username you want to use - your own name would be great. Do not choose "plex", that name is reserved to be used by Plex itself. Other than that, you can use your imagination.

Type

adduser plexuser

Note: make sure you substitute plexuser to your own username wherever it occurs in the tutorial... I might not remember to remind you :)

Use a strong password that you'll remember easily (this is the password you'll be needing each time you log in or make changes), but hard to crack. I chose 123456 - just kidding!

You can enter through all the fields leaving them empty if you like, and finish by typing y and Enter.

Give your new user the right permissions to install and maintain Plex:

usermod -aG sudo plexuser

In order to prepare your server for Plex, you will need to give that name some permissions for later installations. Go ahead and enter

sudo visudo

A text file will open. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to scroll to the bottom and add on a new line:

plexuser ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL

It will look like this:

We're ready for Part 3 - install and configure Plex!

Read first: Creating an infinite Plex server using a VPS and Cloud service

2017-04-14T11:24:00.003-07:00

So you're thinking of starting a media server on a VPS with infinite storage on a cloud service, but you have no idea where to start. This sounds like me, a few weeks ago - I found the installation absolutely daunting!

Fortunately for you I have done all the homework, and now sharing with you what I learned to get the system up and running.

If you follow these steps to the letter, you'll end up with

A Plex or Emby server on a VPS of your choice,
Unlimited storage on a cloud provider (this tutorial uses Google),
A really good feeling of having accomplished something worthwhile!

What I will not be responsible for

Your services. You will need to provide the domain, VPS and cloud services yourself,
Your content. You will need to supply your own content and are solely responsible for what you upload to the cloud,
Any loss of data, money, time or hair.

What you will need:

A local computer to get set up. My tutorial is based on Windows 10 but if you're using a Mac or other system, that would work too,
A little computer knowledge - you know how to use a mouse and keyboard and can find your way around on your local computer,
Time, patience and a bit of perseverance. And you need a domain.

I mostly gathered the information from various Internet sources and the Plex forums, but I have also had some private help from friends (you know who you are). I can't thank you guys enough for your help and hope this tutorial will help some others to be up and running in no time.

VPS

A VPS is basically a computer away from home that offers various preselected (usually) Linux distros out of the box. You can then set it up with any service you like - in our case, Plex with an infinite cloud based storage system.

Choose a VPS service that is semi close to you - in other words, select a provider with data centers in Europe, North America, Asia or wherever you happen to live. If you are given a choice, pick KVM (instead of OpenVZ)... it might be slightly pricier, but will also be more stable and faster.

These are the minimum specs you will need in order to stream HD content comfortably:

2 CPU cores
8GB of Ram
40GB disk space
4TB transfer

The above are the absolute minimum requirements for a single user/stream. If you have multiple users on Plex, or more concurrent transcoding streams, go for a service that offers at least 4 CPU cores and 16GB of RAM.

If you own a gigantic media library (thousands of movies, hundreds of TV shows, etc) or if you are going to use your VPS for downloading content, you might need more than 40GB storage because each media item will take some space to store its metadata and cache.

If you want to use your VPS to copy or sync files between cloud services, you'd want to look for one that unlimited bandwidth and generous rules on network usage. I signed up for a dedicated server at OneProvider when it was on sale.

Cloud

Next, sign up with the cloud service(s) of your preference. I picked G Suite Business as my main service. The reason is that at the time of this writing, they are the most cost effective at $12/month + the cost of a domain. This tutorial will teach you how to set up Google with Plex and/or Emby to basically create an infinite media drive.

Upload your content

While you are are getting ready to setup your VPS, you might as well upload a few movies/TV shows to your cloud service. There are various tutorials on the Plex website on how to set up your media for usage with Plex. I also assume you know how to upload files to your cloud service, so I won't be covering those subjects in this tutorial.

Lastly, this tutorial does not cover data encryption. If this is a concern, you will be able to find numerous sources on the web that will explain the ins and outs of encryption.

PuTTY

You are almost ready to begin your Linux adventures. You will need PuTTY in order to connect to your VPS. You can download it here: http://www.putty.org/
You will need to install it on your local computer so pick the package files suitable for your system.

You'll be using PuTTY every time you have to access your VPS, so you might as well place that icon on your desktop.

We'll learn how to use the terminal throughout this tutorial.

Linux

This tutorial is based on Debian 10 the 64bit version, which currently is the latest version of what most VPS providers offer and seems to work the most reliable of all Linux distros. If in your enthusiasm you already picked a distro when you signed up for a VPS, fret not... most providers allow you to easily rebuild your server. Go to the control panel and click "Rebuild",

Then tick Debian (latest version is 10 as of this writing) and press the "Rebuild" button. Note that you will lose everything on your current distro as this is basically a "factory reset" - proceed with caution!

If Debian is not available, you can pick Ubuntu - though it seems that the newer versions (post 16) seem to introduce more and more quirks when running with Gooby - so as of 2021, I would definitely recommend you go with Debian instead.

You are free to pick any other distro you want, but then I can't guarantee this tutorial will work 100%. If your provider only offers an older version (many still only offer 16.04) you can easily upgrade to 18.04... this tutorial will cover it all!

FUSE

Last but not least, for our setup we need FUSE enabled. Many budget VPS services do not enable this by default, but will do so on request. You will need to open a ticket and submit a request so that your new provider enables FUSE for you.

We're now ready to configure Linux so that it will work with Plex and your mounted drive.

Connecting to your VPS

Start PuTTY, you'll see a configuration screen.

Enter the IP address your VPS provider supplied you with, enter a descriptive name in "Saved Sessions" and hit "Save". Leave Port 22 as it is.

PuTTY will now remember your credentials for next time, always handy!

Next, click "Open". You'll probably get a very scary warning about a potential security breach. Don't panic, it is okay, that always happens the first time you access your VPS from a new location. You can safely click "Yes".

The first time you login, you need to use the password your VPS provider gave you. In most cases, you can find it in the control panel your new host provided you with:

Now, if you wish you can copy (Ctrl-C) that password so you won't have to type it out when you need to enter it.

Then go your black PuTTY terminal. Behind "login as" you need to type:

root

Press the Enter key. It will ask you for your password. Do not enter Ctrl-V! Resist that temptation - it won't work. Don't say you weren't warned... just... you know... don't.

Instead, right click with your mouse button inside the terminal. But... nothing happened? Yes, your password that you copied before was pasted invisibly. Press the Enter key and if all goes well, you'll be presented with this screen:

Admire that splash of green in an otherwise black and white world... that is your cursor.

Choose your path

Now, you can choose what method you want to use to set up your VPS.

Recommended: for a simple menu driven installation, continue with Part 1 - Super simple one step installation.

If you prefer to learn the basics of Linux and set up your server manually, you can still follow the deprecated legacy installation which starts with Part 2 - Configuring Linux... though in all truth I no longer maintain it, nor recommend it.

CloudHQ - the answer to a problem I didn't know I had

2016-09-11T09:11:00.003-07:00

Today I'd like to focus on CloudHQ - a service I have found indispensable in keeping all cloud services connected.

I was a fervent user of Evernote and paid for premium, until recently they upped the price from $45 (US) to $89 (Canadian). I thought of downgrading to Evernote Basic, but then there is new two device limit, which makes Evernote useless to me because I always have a few phones (perks of being a tester) and tablets around.

So, at that point I decided to search for other alternatives. After much research, I decided to settle on Google Docs... which posed an immediate problem. How was I going to get my 1700 notes across to Google Drive? Many contain PDF attachments, images or web clippings. I almost thought I had to give up on the idea... until I suddenly remembered CloudHQ.

In fact, CloudHQ is the only service (that I found) that seems able to do the trick: convert my Evernote files to Google Drive!

Time to put this to the test. Once you log into your account, you are invited to start the cloudHQ setup:

Following the wizard is as easy as click through - in my case, I wanted a single user set up:

To sync two cloud services.

After picking the two I needed (Evernote to Google Drive), the notebooks/stacks I want to transfer and changing to one way sync (I don't need to sync back), this screen pops up.

The only change I made is instead of having all my notes as PDF, I chose to convert them to Google Docs format.

And, that was all. Right away, I got the confirmation that sync was running okay:

After a few hours, all my notes were in Google drive, without a hitch... in the Evernote folder which I had created - Evernote's notebook stacks as main folders:

Individual notebooks as subfolders within the main folder:

And all my notes, PDF attachments and web clippings neatly within that folder.

I can't believe what an easy process it was to convert my entire Evernote collection - thanks to CloudHQ!

P.S. I just learned about their new chrome extension which enables Gmail users to share gmail labels and collaborate with other uses. Might be worth checking it out!

eWallet vs SPB Wallet vs 1Password vs LastPass

2011-02-26T11:42:00.015-07:00

I know the subject of wallet/password software is highly subjective, but I'll still try to give a comparison of the four programs I talked about (I deliberately won't use the word "reviewed", because it was mostly based on my personal expectations and findings).

Pricing
eWallet	SPB Wallet	1Password	LastPass
$19.95 for all versions and platforums, the iPhone app is an additional $9.99.	$19.95 for the Windows version, up to $29.95 bundle price.	$29.95 for the Windows version, up to $59.95 bundle price.	Free, though Premium features and support is $12 per year.
Wallet features
eWallet	SPB Wallet	1Password	LastPass
Wallet items are 100% flexible, can resemble just about any card, document or layout. Attachments are encrypted within the file. Is confusing at first though and has a distinct learning curve.	Digital wallet, has thousands of (downloadable) templates available to match the card in your real wallet. Works easy and intuitive.	Has a few templates, though not customizable and no graphics. Offers encrypted attachments.. Not very flexible, but does exactly what it needs to do.	Very rudimentary templates, not customizable, no graphics, no attachments. However it does allows for prefilling many commonly used fields in the browser, such as credit card information or profile/address.
Password features
eWallet	SPB Wallet	1Password	LastPass
One way only - you have to open eWallet and click the item from there to have the password entered into the browser. Password changes have to be entered manually.	One way only - needs SPB Wallet open and the website entered from there to autofill the login information. Does not keep track of changed passwords.	Very slick browser integration. Two-way sync between browser and program, though you need to enter the master password each time you open the browser. Does not autofill any fields in websites, it requires manually activating the plug-in.	Full browser support, in fact it is a browser app rather than just a plugin. Automatically fills all fields that were previously entered, and keeps automatic track of all changes. Premium features such as profiles really make LastPass a breeze to use both for beginners and advanced users.
Support
eWallet	SPB Wallet	1Password	LastPass
No community support, but staff is responsive when sending a support ticket.	Basic community support, staff is rather helpful in the forums.	Awesome! Staff is friendly, alert and keen, kudos! They go out of their way to welcome new members in the forum too.	Good community support, forum is active (though mostly peer to peer). Staff does its job, though ticket support is slightly slow. Overall: adequate.
Activity/developments
eWallet	SPB Wallet	1Password	LastPass
eWallet is still actively developed, with the latest upgrade released this month. I do think they will be here to stay for many years to come..	SPB Wallet does almost everything it needs to do, but I don't think it is actively developed at this moment. Their last update was at the beginning of 2010, a lifetime in software updates.	1PassWord is almost rabidly supported and updated, with at least weekly updates and tweaks. I never tried their Mac product, but it seems their Windows product is definitely trailing behind at this moment.	As a relative newcomer, LastPass seems full of p*ss and vinegar still... and I hope that is here to stay. I think their product could still use a lot of interface improvements, and a vastly improved widget which does not require 4 or 5 clicks to perform simple tasks such as switch identities.
Last remarks
eWallet	SPB Wallet	1Password	LastPass
The program used to be the cream of the crop 10 years ago, but unfortunately they seem stuck in that time period. In my opinion, they are trailing behind and not offer support for (now) basic features such as wireless syncing or cloud storage. Hopefully that will change one day!	SPB wallet doest what it needs to do, and has a few sweet features that eWallet is lacking. In my mind, it will always be an "also-ran" though... probably more so because I didn't use it extensively enough, than because I have real gripes with it.	I know that the Windows software is just out of beta, so I will definitely keep my eyes on 1Password and see what future updates will bring. So far, I am deeply impressed with the software... the price is slightly steeper than the others, but I think you get what you pay for.	Considering what LastPass professes to be - a tool to make browsing easier and more secure - I can't fault LastPass in any way! Their product is designed with the user in mind. It does not offer eye candy or fancy gadgets - it just does the job and does it really well. Has my highest recommendation for day to day use - it made my digital life so much easier!

Final disclaimer: these posts are not affiliated with HostKitten in any way, neither are the companies/products discussed. These are just the ramblings of a random blogger.

LastPass

2011-02-25T14:12:00.020-07:00

LastPass was actually my last choice... I was extremely weary to try it, yet I find myself "stuck" with it for the moment. LastPass feels a bit like an odd duck, to me it seems more like a browser plugin than "proper" software. However, it means it does one thing really, really well, and that is integrate with my browser.

I am a staunch Chrome user. I downloaded the LastPass installer, and basically all it did was let me create an account, and then offered to install the plugin for every browser I have installed. After that, it started my default Chrome browser, which, like most Google apps, became the main hub from then on. Being a browser app, it means the interface doesn't look as polished as 1Password, nor does it provide its velvety smooth interactions. It most certainly doesn't offer the pretty templates and graphics of eWallet or SPB Wallet.

There is no indication where your local files are stored, and that is not an omission, because all your data resides mostly "in the cloud". I say mostly, because it is actually stored locally, then seamlessly synced with some main server, presumably in LastPass' care. I'd like to emphasize that this is 100% safe, as the data is thoroughly encrypted before it even makes its way to the web.

At first, the fact they purely "do business in the cloud" made me very reluctant to use LastPass. I am of the old school who is used to keep my files close at hand. It is only recently that I discovered the benefits of Dropbox... and LastPass takes it all a big leap forward from that once again. My biggest fear was that if they go out of business, or if their server collapses, I might find myself without my data. However, LastPass has been around for a few years now, and it seems they are not about to "kick the bucket" any time soon.

So, I got over my initial reserves and used LastPass for about a week. From then on, there was no going back. One huge benefit of the cloud storage is that when I open LastPass on my Android and change a password, it is immediately synced back to any machine I use... something none of the other programs offer. But LastPass does so much more that really makes my digital life easy. I spent the $12 for a year's subscription of premium features, which means that now Murray and I can both have our own profile.For example, when he visits the Gmail site, he is logged in automatically, and when I visit the same site on my machine, it logs me in as "me". When I select my work profile and visit the same site once more, it will log me in with my Google Apps account. Who could wish for any more convenience than that?

One featured I really loved about 1Password is the grouping of sites, in which you can bundle for example amazon.com, amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk together and you will be logged into all with the same account. LastPass offers the same functionality. LastPass may be slightly crude in appearance, but I soon learned that the developers really thought of everything! Yes, I have fallen in love again with a program.

LastPass if absolutely unobtrusive, but it is there when I need it. When I visit a site and log in, it offers to remember my login for me. When I revisit that site later, it immediately fills the fields, and all I have to do is click "Enter". I can opt to skip even that and be fully logged in as soon as I visit the site! Unfortunately, even though it offered to import all my 1Password data, it did not translate very well and both the usernames and passwords ended up in the "comment" field... so I found myself having to re-log into every single site again to allow LastPass to grab the information.

My husband, being even more a creature of habit than myself, has created accounts on hundreds of sites and forums over the years, and recently we found out his (one) password is one of the worst 500 of all times. With LastPass, I was finally able to break that habit - without him knowing even! I switched to his profile, visited the sites he frequents, entered his data, then had LastPass generate a super strong password. It immediately offered to replace the stored password with the new one, which of course I did. Now, when Murray visits any of his sites, he doesn't even realize his passwords have changed, because he gets logged in auto-magically! All he needs to do is remember our brand new, super strong, fancy password, and only has to re-enter it once every two weeks.

There are other clever solutions, such as when a site uses a different format (for example instead of a username, it requires a mobile phone number), and LastPass does not automatically understand that it needs to save this information, all you need to do is click "Save all Entered Data". Next time you visit the site, it will prefill it all neatly.

Lastly, I found the forum helpful and rather friendly, though the staff is not as obliging as the 1Password crowd. Still, whenever I needed help, I got my answers quick enough. Likewise with sending in a ticket, it took a day or two to get back to me, but then my problem was solved swiftly and satisfactory.

The only thing I am still slightly weary about is the all-cloud solution, but that is probably just me. It is easy to export all information keep it in 1Password as a backup

All in all, for now, LastPass is our first choice to store our passwords, hands on. I haven't found any features lacking yet, and as I said, it does what it needs to do really, really well.

1Password by Agile

2011-02-24T15:46:00.022-07:00

Finally, I got a mad-on to find the Perfect Password Program, and bought not only 1Password, but installed LastPass as well.

In this post I will discuss 1Password first, created by Agile Web Solutions. Originally intended for the Mac only, they now offer a MS Windows solution as well, which is what I purchased. When I bought the program, I was under the impression that I needed to purchase the family licence for my multiple computers and also, I thought my husband Murray would be tempted to use it as well. When I found out that neither was the case, I contacted Agile and promptly received $20 back, with a friendly and personal message. I can't emphasize enough how delightful it is to know there are human beings behind a company... 1Password has that down pat.

Installation of the program was a breeze. I could not import my eWallet entries, the reason why was explained patiently in their forum. However, copying and pasting the information manually only took about an hour or less, so I wasn't too upset. I very much liked the way I could use Dropbox to not only sync between my desktop and netbook (which both eWallet and SPB Wallet do too), but with my Nexus One as well, albeit read-only on Android. Setting that up was a bit of a hassle and slightly buggy, but not annoyingly so.

1Password provides add-ons for IE, Firefox and Chrome (probably more, but I don't use anything else). What a vast improvement on both eWallet and SPB Wallet - 1Password actually resides in the background of the browser, and not only remembers your passwords, but offers to save new ones as well! The feature I have been patiently waiting for in eWallet for the past 8+ years!

However, there are a few drawbacks to 1Password which actually prevent me from using it full time. Remember, I am still talking about the Windows version, apparently the Mac version is miles ahead in that respect. One thing that unfortunately put me off, is the fact that EVERY TIME you accidentally close your browser, you need to re-log in.

A second feature I miss is the fact it does not auto-fill the fields such as login and password. When I tried to show Murray, my husband, how easy 1Password is, he just about pranced.
He is not conditioned by really inconvenient software such as eWallet, after all, so I made the mistake of wanting to show the conveniences of 1Password after he had clicked the X to exit Chrome to keep a clean desktop- a habit he can't be weaned out of. So, I started his browser, surfed to one of his forums, then clicked the 1Password icon, entered his master password, and then selected the login bar. He looked at me disgusted, and told me in no uncertain terms where I could put THAT piece of junk. He said it would be a hundred times quicker to just type in his username and password for that site... and I had not argument against it.

All in all however, I do like 1Password very much, and if they improve the usability a bit more, I might find myself back to using it again one day. Their forum is warm, friendly and helpful, and I get the impression the software is being worked on constantly. In the few weeks I tried 1Password, I got at least 3 updates, and all added useful and rather major features.

In conclusion, 1Password is a keeper - but not for my day-to-day use. For the moment I admit it is on the back burner and serves mainly as a backup for LastPass. However, as soon as Agile has implemented the features I need, I will probably find myself back with it. It is solid software, looks great and is a pleasure to use. It just lacks a few major features that I can't live without, and which LastPass does offer.... for now.