SSH into your Raspberry Pi running Raspberry Pi OS Lite and run the following commands to ensure your Raspberry Pi OS Lite is up to date

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Sometimes this process can take a few minutes. As long as your Terminal window is still scrolling everything should be working as intended, but watch for prompts where you may need to acknowledge some installations and upgrades.

If you need help with SSH or Secure Shell you can refer to the previous post in this series – How To SSH or Secure Shell into your Raspberry Pi

Run the following command to Install the transport package which will enable adding Plex Media Server to your Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi OS Lite.

sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https

This process might take a minute or two.

Now you need to install a key to access the correct repositories for your Headless Plex Media Server.

Run the following Command:

curl https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-keys/PlexSign.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/plex-archive-keyring.gpg >/dev/null

This should only take a second to install.

Add Plex Media Server to your Raspberry Pi OS Lite sources list with the following command:

echo deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/plex-archive-keyring.gpg] https://downloads.plex.tv/repo/deb public main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plexmediaserver.list

This should only take a second to install.

And just to be comprehensive, you should now run another update on your Raspberry Pi OS Lite. Run this command:

sudo apt-get update

This time the update should be pretty quick.

Now we can finally install the Plex Media Server Package to your Raspberry Pi OS Lite.

In the same Terminal window run the following command:

sudo apt install plexmediaserver

You may need to confirm some default options during the installation. If things seem to have stalled just read any messages in the terminal window and confirm them.

Best practice is to use a static IP address for your Plex Media Server to ensure reliable usage.

Let’s find out what the current IP address is with the following command:

hostname -I

Then copy and save the IP address. The format will be #.#.#.# and it will look something like this:

0.0.1.24 2601:5631:e190:68d3:500f:e970:e970

You just want those first 4 numbers and you can ignore anything that comes after.

Save the IP address from the previous step somewhere, then run the following command in your terminal:

sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt

This will take you to a slightly different UI in Terminal to edit the cmdline.txt file. Use your keyboard arrows to navigate down to a new line (↓)

In cmdline.txt, on the new line you arrowed down to, add your IP address using the following format:

ip=#.#.#.#

Replace #.#.#.# with the IP address you previously copied and saved.

Save the change to the IP address for your Raspberry Pi with the following Keyboard commands:

control + x

Then

Y (or Yes)

Hit Enter if you’re not automatically taken back to the previous Terminal view.

Almost there.

Now you can reboot your Raspberry Pi to get your Headless Plex Media Server up and running with the following command:

sudo reboot

This might take a minute or two. Terminal might appear frozen during reboot, so be patient.

To complete the set up you now just need to open Plex Media Server in your browser by navigating to the following url:

#.#.#.#:32400/web/

once again, you’ll need to replace #.#.#.# with the IP address you previously copied and saved.

You’ll be prompted to sign in to your Plex account (you can also create a new account at this stage). Make note of this URL as it may come in handy sometimes if you want to tinker with the local version of your Plex server.

At this point you’ll be taken through some steps to finish setting up your Plex installation in the browser.

Most of these steps are self explanatory. We’ll get into adding additional Libraries for your Headless Plex Server in the next articles!