Installing Plex on a Raspberry Pi 3B+

Question

According to https://support.plex.tv/articles/235974187-enable-repository-updating-for-supported-linux-server-distributions/ and a few other sitesI should do a

sudo apt install apt-transport-https

echo deb https://downloads.plex.tv/repo/deb public main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plexmediaserver.list

then a

curl https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-keys/PlexSign.key | sudo apt-key add -

But I get this warning:

Warning: apt-key is deprecated. Manage keyring files in trusted.gpg.d instead (see apt-key(8)). gpg: no valid OpenPGP data found.

I've asked about this in the official Plex forum, but no answers. Instead I downloaded the .deb package from their website, copied it to the RPI on an external drive attached via SMB, then ran a

sudo dpkg -i plexmediaserver_1.25.2.5319-c43dc0277_arm64.deb

Everything works fine, aparently. My question is this:

When using the first method, I should install plex with

sudo apt install plexmediaserver

, meaning that in the future, when I run a sudo apt upgrade, also the Plex software will be updated. But with the method I used, this is not an option. There is an option in the server software, to do an update. I have no idea how this method works. But as Plex releases new updates fairly often, I just want to make sure I can update the software this way.

And that's my question. I'm new to Linux.

Answer 1

If a package is available in the repository, it is always best to install it using this sequence:

sudo apt update 
...
sudo apt upgrade
...
sudo apt install <packagename>

You can check for the availability of a package in apt using this command:

apt-cache search <package name>

When I check for plexmediaserver:

apt-cache search plexmediaserver

There are no results - which means that there is no apt package for plexmediaserver - which also means that apt update & apt upgrade won't work - you'll have to rely on some other mechanism for updates. The package itself may have this update/upgrade feature built in.