I’m a computer and open source enthusiast from Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • The error sounds like your sqlite database file is borked, misplaced or not named correctly. Make sure to shut down Plex on the source Windows machine fully before copying it over. Also make sure the path to the database file is valid - not sure where Plex stores that. Also keep in mind that Linux paths and file names are cAsE SenSiTiVE, so if your db file was named “Plex.db” on Windows, and the Linux version of Plex expects “plex.db” - you will get an error.

    Other issues to anticipate related to file/directory naming: library/metadata paths. You may need to redefine/rescan all your media libraries to fix that depending on how Plex handles transitions between platforms that use different path separators (Windows = \ and Linux/macOS = /) and case sensitivity (Windows and macOS = case INsensitive and Linux = case sensitive).

    Also consider a DB backup/restore (feature built into Plex) may be a better way to transition vs. just copying the DB file over.

    If you’re feeling adventurous, you can download a SQLite browser and take a peek at the Plex DB file. See if there are any red flags like paths to libraries that include Windows specific stuff like drive letters. That will probably break in Linux if just copied over. The backup/restore feature may account for that and actually try to take care of the differences… but that’s just a guess; I never tried this and have no experience with it.

    Note: I never bothered to run Plex on anything other than Linux.

    P.S. some here suggested using Docker (or Podman - probably better in the long run) to deploy Plex. I strongly recommend that option as well, since it abstracts a lot of the nuts and bolts that you no longer need to care about.














  • Assuming you were using a Linux software RAID, you should be able to recover it.

    The first step would be to determine what kind of RAID you were using… btrfs, zfs, mdraid/dmraid/lvm… do you know what kind you set up?

    To start the process, try reconnecting your RAID disks to a working Linux machine, then try checking:

    1. The sudo lsblk command will help you get a list of all connected disks, sizes and partitions.
    2. The partition tables on the disks, eg: sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda (that’s a lowercase L and /dev/sda is your disk)
    3. Assuming you use a standard Linux software RAID, try sudo mdadm --examine /dev/sda1. If all goes well, the last command should give you an idea of what state the disk is in, what RAID level you had, etc.
    4. Next, I would try and see if mdadm can figure out how to reassemble the array, so try sudo mdadm --examine --scan. That should hopefully produce output with the name of the RAID array block device (eg, /dev/md0), RAID level and members of the RAID array (number of disks). Let me know what you discover…

    Note: if you used zfs of btrfs, do not do steps 3 and 4; they are MD RAID specific.



  • Legacy API and app behaviour support. Ironically replacing the registry with something more straightforward would be relatively easy, unlike adding support for storing home directories on a drive other than C. Technically you can mount a different filesystem under c:/users to achieve this, but AFAIK that’s neither supported nor trivial to do.

    I tried doing it, and gave up. Sure, most software will respect the path changes in the user’s registry hive, however, every once in a while a program will just assume that your home dir lives under c:\documents and settings$username - and that’s when it all goes south. Really frustrating this lack of consistency.

    All in all, the OS is riddled with hacks and “supports” for legacy runtimes and behaviours. Heck, my username is poking fun at the fact that Windows 7 had support for the 386 (yes, Intel’s 80386 processor from the late 80’s) enhanced API. Windows 7…. My username is a “tribute” to a file called krnl386.exe that implemented a bunch of legacy API calls like how much RAM a system has or whether or not the OS is running in “386 enhanced mode” that were relevant back in Windows 3.x days… and still supported in Windows 7. That pretty much sums up why Windows is, and always will be, a hot mess.