I recently acquired a dedicated server through Hetzner DE server auctions for 24EUR a month and setup a Plex "Streambox". After eventually getting it to work I decided that I should share the information I found here, for anyone else who wants to go this route. Basically what this box allows you to do is stream your favourite media from a dedicated Plex Media Server (PMS) hosted by your preferred hosting company. Naturally this means that you will need a fast enough internet connection to stream from it, 2mbps should be fine for low quality streaming. I've shared the media library on the PMS with friends and family to use, they're loving it and so am I. They all now have a central place to watch media from, like family event photos and home videos. Quite nifty if you ask me. Here's a list of the current software on the server: Ubuntu 14.04, PMS, SickRage, CouchPotato, rTorrent / ruTorrent, Syncthing, OpenVPN, and some other smaller packages that include monitoring, etc. I'm going to be sharing links to tutorials for all of these, including some tips I learned along the way.
I'm new to Linux and have very little command line experience so it took me 3-4 days of struggling to get box setup. Finding solutions to my problems was not easy and most tutorials are spread across the internet, so you have to dig a little to find the right one. I'm going to be listing some of the tutorials I found useful here.
First off, you want to get yourself a Dedicated Server. I chose the Hetzner auction because the value for money is really good. Auction site: https://robot.your-server.de/order/market. I got the the server with the following hardware: Intel Core i7 3770, 16GB RAM and 2x3TB HDD's. Be warned, these are 2nd hand boxes that have been handed back to Hetzner after use. There is no way beforehand to tell how old the hardware in the server is. I've read of some people who's hard drives have crashed after only a few days of use. I've been lucky thus far, no hardware failures. However, I've read that Hetzner's support is quite good so if a drive does fail they should replace it for you fairly quickly.
They will ask you for proof of identity and address. These are required to confirm that you are who you say you are and for tax EU tax exclusion (less 20%). Once the server is setup, you'll receive an email with the login details of the server and your robot login details. You will use the robot to administrate your server online, you'll want to keep your robot access details safe (trust me, you'll be using this a lot for restarts if things go wrong during your server setup).
On first use, the server will be in "rescue mode". You'll need to SSH into your server using a client like Putty. The access details should have been emailed to you. Once logged on to the server, you'll install your preferred OS, I installed Ubuntu Server 14.04. You can follow this guide to do the installation: http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Installimage/en. The hard drives are setup with raid 1 by default, you'll have to change that to raid 0 in the setup config by setting "SWRAIDLEVEL" to 0 instead of 1 if you want access to the full 6TB. Also, the config file sets the root partition to 1TB by default. Usually you only need 8GB but because you're going to be using Plex I suggest making it 100GB. Here is a screenshot I took of my setup
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Once the OS is installed and you've rebooted the server, you will login to the server again using Putty. You can use an all-in-one script to setup a seedbox (if you choose). This is the script I used: http://www.torrent-invites.com/showthread.php?t=272859. It takes about 10 mins to run, if you get disconnected from your session during the setup you'll need to start the entire setup process from scratch. This happened to me a few times because I have an unstable internet connection. To solve this, I changed the SSH Cipher in Putty to use the "Blowfish" policy over "AES". Once complete, the script should display a message with a summary of some of the connection details. The most important one to take note of is the new SSH port number which it generated, this will be used going forward for your SSH sessions. After you've taken note of the new port number, you'll need to restart the server. You can view all the service connection details in a text file the script creates: https://[Your-Server-IP]/private/SBinfo.txt.
Next you'll need to configure your rutorrent, I used this tutorial to configure Autotools and the folder structure required for SickRage and Couchpotato: http://sickbeard.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4086. You can also use this guide to configure your SickRage later one. I created my folders in "/home/user/downloads".
Now, install SickRage and Couchpotato:
SickRage: http://www.htpcbeginner.com/install-sickrage-on-ubuntu/
- I used SickBeard for the longest time but it doesn't support torrents, so I switched to SickRage.
CouchPotato: http://www.htpcbeginner.com/install-couchpotato-on-ubuntu/
I'm assuming you've used these applications before but if not, I'm sure you'll find guides on how to configure them on the internet, they're very popular.
Plex installation Plex support has a fairly good guide: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200288586-Installation
You can also use this one: http://www.htpcguides.com/install-plex-media-server-ubuntu-14-04/
The tricky thing that I could not figure out was how to access the PMS in my browser after installation. There is a simple explanation at the bottom of the Plex support guide, you'll need to do an SSH Tunnel into your server using Putty. This will make it look like you're logging into your server on the same network.
Lastly, you'll can install Syncthing. Syncthing is like your personal dropbox service. What I use it for is to sync certain folders from my server to my local machine and vice versa, e.g. family photos or videos. I used this guide to help with installation and config: https://www.digitalocean.com/commun...ng-to-synchronize-directories-on-ubuntu-14-04
That's it. Once you've configured all the apps correctly, you should have a fully functional Plex "Streambox" that you can share with Friends and Family.
PS-For those that will be using the seedbox, make sure you use a private tracker like TD, TSH or SCC. Also, to keep your ratios up when initially getting all your media for the box, be sure to use "Freeleech".
If you have any questions feel free to send me a PM or post on this thread. I'm sure there are many guys on this forum, besides me, who will gladly help.
I'm new to Linux and have very little command line experience so it took me 3-4 days of struggling to get box setup. Finding solutions to my problems was not easy and most tutorials are spread across the internet, so you have to dig a little to find the right one. I'm going to be listing some of the tutorials I found useful here.
First off, you want to get yourself a Dedicated Server. I chose the Hetzner auction because the value for money is really good. Auction site: https://robot.your-server.de/order/market. I got the the server with the following hardware: Intel Core i7 3770, 16GB RAM and 2x3TB HDD's. Be warned, these are 2nd hand boxes that have been handed back to Hetzner after use. There is no way beforehand to tell how old the hardware in the server is. I've read of some people who's hard drives have crashed after only a few days of use. I've been lucky thus far, no hardware failures. However, I've read that Hetzner's support is quite good so if a drive does fail they should replace it for you fairly quickly.
They will ask you for proof of identity and address. These are required to confirm that you are who you say you are and for tax EU tax exclusion (less 20%). Once the server is setup, you'll receive an email with the login details of the server and your robot login details. You will use the robot to administrate your server online, you'll want to keep your robot access details safe (trust me, you'll be using this a lot for restarts if things go wrong during your server setup).
On first use, the server will be in "rescue mode". You'll need to SSH into your server using a client like Putty. The access details should have been emailed to you. Once logged on to the server, you'll install your preferred OS, I installed Ubuntu Server 14.04. You can follow this guide to do the installation: http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Installimage/en. The hard drives are setup with raid 1 by default, you'll have to change that to raid 0 in the setup config by setting "SWRAIDLEVEL" to 0 instead of 1 if you want access to the full 6TB. Also, the config file sets the root partition to 1TB by default. Usually you only need 8GB but because you're going to be using Plex I suggest making it 100GB. Here is a screenshot I took of my setup
Once the OS is installed and you've rebooted the server, you will login to the server again using Putty. You can use an all-in-one script to setup a seedbox (if you choose). This is the script I used: http://www.torrent-invites.com/showthread.php?t=272859. It takes about 10 mins to run, if you get disconnected from your session during the setup you'll need to start the entire setup process from scratch. This happened to me a few times because I have an unstable internet connection. To solve this, I changed the SSH Cipher in Putty to use the "Blowfish" policy over "AES". Once complete, the script should display a message with a summary of some of the connection details. The most important one to take note of is the new SSH port number which it generated, this will be used going forward for your SSH sessions. After you've taken note of the new port number, you'll need to restart the server. You can view all the service connection details in a text file the script creates: https://[Your-Server-IP]/private/SBinfo.txt.
Next you'll need to configure your rutorrent, I used this tutorial to configure Autotools and the folder structure required for SickRage and Couchpotato: http://sickbeard.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4086. You can also use this guide to configure your SickRage later one. I created my folders in "/home/user/downloads".
Now, install SickRage and Couchpotato:
SickRage: http://www.htpcbeginner.com/install-sickrage-on-ubuntu/
- I used SickBeard for the longest time but it doesn't support torrents, so I switched to SickRage.
CouchPotato: http://www.htpcbeginner.com/install-couchpotato-on-ubuntu/
I'm assuming you've used these applications before but if not, I'm sure you'll find guides on how to configure them on the internet, they're very popular.
Plex installation Plex support has a fairly good guide: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200288586-Installation
You can also use this one: http://www.htpcguides.com/install-plex-media-server-ubuntu-14-04/
The tricky thing that I could not figure out was how to access the PMS in my browser after installation. There is a simple explanation at the bottom of the Plex support guide, you'll need to do an SSH Tunnel into your server using Putty. This will make it look like you're logging into your server on the same network.
Lastly, you'll can install Syncthing. Syncthing is like your personal dropbox service. What I use it for is to sync certain folders from my server to my local machine and vice versa, e.g. family photos or videos. I used this guide to help with installation and config: https://www.digitalocean.com/commun...ng-to-synchronize-directories-on-ubuntu-14-04
That's it. Once you've configured all the apps correctly, you should have a fully functional Plex "Streambox" that you can share with Friends and Family.
PS-For those that will be using the seedbox, make sure you use a private tracker like TD, TSH or SCC. Also, to keep your ratios up when initially getting all your media for the box, be sure to use "Freeleech".
If you have any questions feel free to send me a PM or post on this thread. I'm sure there are many guys on this forum, besides me, who will gladly help.
