Plex

Summary

Plex Media Server is a software application that organizes and streams your personal collection of movies, TV shows, music, photos, and more to nearly any device. It runs on a computer, NAS, or compatible server hardware, cataloging media with rich metadata like posters, episode details, and album art for a polished, Netflix-like interface. Once set up, Plex lets you stream content locally on your home network or remotely over the internet, and it supports user accounts, parental controls, transcoding for different devices, and optional features like live TV and DVR with a tuner. It’s widely used as an all-in-one hub for managing and enjoying digital media libraries.

Common Tasks

Plex Server Not Authorized

In some rare situations, you may find yourself “locked out” from being able to access your Plex Media Server and unable to directly access the server settings. One of the most common causes for this is if your server is signed in to one account (perhaps one used with an old, previous installation) and your web app is signed in with a different account that doesn’t have permission to connect to the server.

It can also occur after you change your password, remove your server “Device” entry, or otherwise invalidate the existing authentication token that your server uses.

You can try the instructions here: [1]

But likely you'll need to "re-claim" your server. See instructions below.

Claim Plex Server

This must be done by accessing http://127.0.0.1:32400 locally on the Plex server. Of course, this is difficult to do on a headless Linux box with no GUI. So we tunnel!

You can pretty easily tunnel with PuTTY:

1. Go to Connection > SSH > Tunnels
2. Add a new forwarded port:

   Source port: 32400

   Destination: 127.0.0.1:32400

3. After you open the SSH connection, point your browser to http://127.0.0.1:32400

Tatutulli

Tautulli is a third-party monitoring and analytics tool designed to work alongside Plex, giving you detailed insight into how your media server is being used. It tracks who is watching what, when, and on which devices, and provides rich statistics, history logs, and real-time activity monitoring. Tautulli can also send notifications (like when a user starts streaming), generate reports, and help you optimize your server by showing bandwidth usage and playback trends—making it especially useful for anyone running a shared or heavily used Plex setup.

Update

# Pull the latest Tautulli update
docker compose pull
# Update and restart the Tautulli container
docker compose up -d