Install Plex Media Server on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver

Hello everyone, welcome to another Ubuntu Tutorial. Today, we are going to learn how to install Plex Media Server on Ubuntu 18.04. Plex Media Server is a great multimedia application that will turn your Ubuntu into a rich features multimedia server. You can then stream your music or movies from any devices at home. Plex comes with many new features. This tutorial is based on Plex Media Server version 1.10 which was released in mid-December 2017. If you are running another Linux distribution, you may check our previous tutorials below:

Steps to Install Plex Media Server on Ubuntu 18.04

Step 1. Download the installer

On this article, I am going to install via Terminal. So, let’s get started. Open Terminal or connect to your Ubuntu 18.04 via SSH from another computer if you want. Then, download the latest PMS for Ubuntu with the following command

cd /tmp
wget https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-media-server/1.10.1.4602-f54242b6b/plexmediaserver_1.10.1.4602-f54242b6b_amd64.deb

Step 2. Install PMS

Now, use the following command to install the DEB package we downloaded from the first step above. 

sudo dpkg -i plexmediaserver_1.10.1.4602-f54242b6b_amd64.deb

Make sure there is no error

dhani@ubuntu-server:/tmp$ sudo dpkg -i plexmediaserver_1.10.1.4602-f54242b6b_amd64.deb 
[sudo] password for dhani: 
Selecting previously unselected package plexmediaserver.
(Reading database ... 88557 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack plexmediaserver_1.10.1.4602-f54242b6b_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking plexmediaserver (1.10.1.4602-f54242b6b) ...
Setting up plexmediaserver (1.10.1.4602-f54242b6b) ...
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/plexmediaserver.service → /lib/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service.
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.60ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for systemd (235-3ubuntu3) ...
Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-20) ...

Step 3. Configure Plex Media Server

Now, open a web browser and type the following address. Change the IP address with your Ubuntu 18.04 IP address.

http://192.168.1.6:32400/manage

First, we need to sign in using our Plex account or you can use your existing accounts such as Google and Facebook.

Next, we can start configuring our Plex Server. First, type the name of our new server. 

Click Next to continue to the next step. We can now add and modify our multimedia library

You can add your movies, music and TV channel to Plex. Your music and other multimedia will be shown in Plex dashboard below. In this case, I didn’t add music and movies to my server yet.

install plex media server on Ubuntu 18.04

3 Comments

  1. I have installed this as directed and added directories to my library. The folders contain files, but the server is unable to see them. Any ideas?

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