Flash Memory Plugin and Plex -

  • I was thinking about using the flash memory plugin (since I temporarily use a 32gb SD card through usb 3.0) as my boot drive for OMV. I checked https://bintray.com/openmediav…iavault-flashmemory/view#


    There is no documentation on the readme or the release notes.


    1. Does the plugin turn of all writes to the whole SD card(even the extra space not used by OMB o/s)?



    2. Plex has to encode the media file before serving it up to the client. If plex was using the boot drive to encode the media, where is plex going to encode the files now? (i.e. Ram? My external USB hard drive containing my movies?)



    3. I have 16GB of ram, I see barely about 2gb of usage. How much more ram wil be used by the flash memory plugin to stop writes to my SD card? Is this dynamically allocated based on total memory or usage, or is it a fixed amount?



    4. After the flash memory plugin is installed successfully, is there a downside to using this?



    5. Is the Ram drive that the flash memory plugin creates allocated for other uses? . I.e. For plex movie art, database, cache, etc?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    1. No. The flash plugin radically reduce the amount of writes a fresh install does to the rootfs on the flash memory. But there is nothing to stop writes to the rootfs if you install additional plugins or other software. For instance Plex.


    2. In my Plex install (Armbian on a HC2 with the rootfs on an SSD) most (>95%) of the media is streamed directly without any transcoding. Fast WiFi and powerful clients. There is nothing to stop Plex from writing to the rootfs if you choose to install it. It is perfectly possible to use symbolic links so that /var/lib/plexmediaserver (the data for Plex) is linked to somewhere on another partition than on the rootfs. That also simplifies backups of the rootfs. You may be able to do something similar with the Plex plugin? (I am about to skip Plex and use Emby instead. Emby is very similar to Plex in this area.)


    3. OMV makes use of tmpfs and zram to improve use of RAM and reduce writes to the rootfs. With tmpfs, typically up to half of available RAM, will be used. I doubt that the flash plugin changes this. "Unused" RAM is automatically used for disc caches, so it is NOT wasted!!! I repeat: "Unused" RAM is being used to speed up disc accesses!!!


    4. Log files may be lost in crashes. Access to files is not timestamped. Otherwise no big downsides.


    5. Tmpfs can and is being used by other apps. But typically for things that is OK to keep in volatile memory. Not movie art or database. Possibly some caches. Possibly temp storage for transcoded files.


    So if you are not careful it is very easy to defeat the benefits from using the flash plugin by installing for instance Plex or other software that writes a lot to the rootfs. This can be countered by moving stuff from the rootfs to another partition/filesystems. If you move it to a (slow) USB-connected partition then your system may become very slow and/or unstable.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    There is no documentation on the readme or the release notes.

    The config file (/etc/folder2ram/folder2ram.conf) it uses is the best source of documentation or the code that writes the config file - https://github.com/OpenMediaVa…avault/mkconf/flashmemory. You can see the mount points it "protects".


    After the flash memory plugin is installed successfully, is there a downside to using this?

    No matter what the downsides, I definitely would not run OMV on an SD card or usb stick without this plugin. I have seen SD cards fail in two days without it.


    Is the Ram drive that the flash memory plugin creates allocated for other uses? . I.e. For plex movie art, database, cache, etc?

    Even with 16gb ram, you would probably still not be able to fit the plex database in tmpfs.

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    • Offizieller Beitrag

    My Plex data folder /var/lib/plexmediaserver is around 19 GB. (Now unused.)
    My Emby data folder /var/lib/emby is around 1 GB. I have Emby store images and other metadata together with the media files.


    So it *might* be possible to keep the Emby data folder in tmpfs.

  • Thanks everyone for the response!


    I know this is off subject but if Emby data folderis only less than a gig versus the 17 gigs, where is the rest stored? (or is emby not storing things that plex is?)

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    It is possible to configure Emby so that it stores images together with the media files. Instead of on the default place in the rootfs. I think it is about the same amount of data stored for both Plex and Emby. But for Emby it can be stored spread out on the data filesystems.


    I would not use Emby or Plex unless I completely eliminate writes to the filesystem on the SD-card!


    I run Emby (and previously Plex) on a HC2 with Armbian and with the root filesystem moved from the SD card to a SSD. The media files are stored on other HC2s with mechanical HDDs.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    With my Emby config I use MCM to scrape the movies/tv first before transferring to their appropriate folder, I also have a separate share for additional cached images and actors etc.
    MCM is windows based but tiny media manager is cross platform.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    I would not use Emby or Plex unless I completely eliminate writes to the filesystem on the SD-card!

    If you emby or plex in a docker and docker is configured to store data on a data drive, they should not write on the sd card. But nothing will ever eliminate writes completely (unless you want to throw everything away on reboot) because it needs to sync to sd card at some point.

    omv 7.0.4-2 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.10 | compose 7.1.2 | k8s 7.0-6 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

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