Last month, I wrote about commissioning Plex Media Server on a ZimaBoard. All appared to go smoothly except that the service kept failing. The transcoders just wouldn’t run on the little Celeron processor in the Zima Board. Plex Media Server was not stable on the Zima Board so I sent it to jail. After the break, I describe how Plex was failing and what I tried next.
Revisions
- 2024-09-18 Original. This post continues the saga of commissioning Plex on a ZimaBoard. We sank at the pier.
References
- Plex Media Server Requirements
- Zima Board Product Description
- TrueNAS Core 13 Jails, Plugins, and Virtual Machines
- Cockpit Linux Web Console
- System76 Meerkat SFF system configurator and pricing
Perplexity provided Plex Media Server video hardware requirements in response to my questions. I’ve summarized the response below. I’m beginning to like Perplexity enough to subscribe.
Plex, We have a problem …
The symptoms were Linux watch-dog timer hangs running on the Celeron. I discovered these by adding Cockpit to the ZimaBoard, dropping by, and reviewing the logs. There the watchdog stalls and traps had been logged.
That’s the symptom on the little Celeron N3450 / J3455. Both have Intel Gen 9 HD500 embedded graphics. IceWhale chose these parts because they were looking for a small form factor and a low selling price.
Meanwhile, Plex makes no clear statement of the transcoding resources needed or the specific libraries used. Did they use OpenCL or Cuda? Do they use vendor provided libraries from Microsoft, AMD, or nVidia? They don’t say. Did they use ffmpeg and leave it up to the OS packager to get it right? They don’t say. So, how do I pick hardware? Reddit is full of Plex hardware folklore. But Reddit is the land of “Me too” and not actual horses mouth information.
Plex support is pretty thin also. I suspect they last looked at video performance requirements when ATSC 1 was rolling out. ATSC 3 is here. 4K can be broadcast, and new vector instructions and new hardware support for video transcoders has been developed and deployed.
Plex does mention that Plex Media Server will run on Free BSD 11 or newer. It will run in a jail. It will run on TrueNAS 13 Core (but jails and VMs are retired in 13.3.)
I’m in a box …
I rather like Plex and I rather like DVRs. I’ve had a DVR about of one sort or another since 2002, (primordial TiVO). The latest change was to add a jail to Sherman, install Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS by hand, and install Plex from the package repository by hand. This went smoothly. Plex is running, and we are sorting out permissions so Plex can read and write its dataset in the pool. That’s the literal part of in a box.
The metaphorical part of the box is that iX Systems is keeping the FreeBSD TrueNAS about for SOHO customers. But, they have moved to Debian for enterprise customers. Core uses FreeBSD’s Linux binary interface to run a subset of the Scale code on FreeBSD. But back porting fixes is becoming difficult and this path will become untenable at some point.
So, I need a new host for Plex …
The little half-liter systems look attractive and come with robust graphics, especially the newer AMD Zen APU parts. But there’s no data for picking them. Plex needs to add a proper statement of resources needed to the support page. This should include the
- instruction set options needed,
- vector libraries used,
- codec libraries used,
- OS versions supported
- Prerequisite packages
It’s that or loose the DVR market to TabloTV.
Hardware Requirements
Typical new hardware running Plex for 4K transcoding (like for football?) is believed to need the following. These specs can be had for $1000 or so off the rack.
- Intel Core i7 of recent vintage (Series 11, current is 13 or 14.)
- Intel Irix Graphics
- System disk of 64 GB or bigger
- Media disk of 1-2 TB
The E3 Xeon 1225 V5 in Sherman does not have the horses to transcode video. The processor in Peabody is even less capable.
Plex has not put a lot of effort into sorting Plex Media Server for AMD hardware including processors, GPUs, and APUs. It appears some are coding to the metal rather than using OpenCL libraries for video transcoding. Manufacturers have traditionally eschewed portability for performance with velvet handcuffs.
System76 has a nice SFF product in its Meerkat line. Originally, these were private labeled Intel NUC. More recently, System76 is doing something different. They’ve not said.
But System76 are capable of doing board layout, designing enclosures, having the bits manufactured, and putting them together in house as Schiit does with its products. These are solid machines of good value. And System76 specs them in some detail.
And a CasaOS Retirement Party?
Sadly, I’ve had to retire CasaOS. The problem was less that CasaOS was buggy. There is a big leap from classical Unix admin to care and feeding of container systems and containerized applications. I could not find good administrator or deployment guides. CasaOS in its present state assumes too much prerequisite knowledge.
Dismal Manor Dispatches 