I am at the crossroads of needing to upgrade but my sticking point as always been my Plex server which is hosted in a Jail in TrueNAS-13.0-U6.7
My thinking is:
Upgrade to Scale.
Install Plex
Setup plex to point to the correct data
Somehow import the previous Plex settings, this is the bit I am unsure of, is this straightforward?
I’d try to pen down and recreate the settings and only import the data.
Complex “linuxy” applications that do not really support FreeBSD well were always a pain in jails, so I’d recommend a fresh start if feasible.
I love FreeBSD and I still run the majority of my services in jails on CORE, but only things that fully support FreeBSD as a tier 1 platform, like e.g. Nextcloud, or Grafana, Gitea, Guacamole …
Everything that by default comes in Docker is now on CE, here.
The plex server data should be in /usr/local/plexdata-plexpass or /usr/local/plexdata (or somewhere else??? find it) inside the jail
You’ll need to get that data outside the jail. Put all the files contained in there in it’s own dataset. Then when you’re creating Plex again, point to that dataset for the plex config.
I just did this exact thing about two weeks ago. It took five or six tries of getting things wrong, uninstalling it, and trying again, but I did manage to copy all of my old metadata, watch states, and everything.
I started by shutting down the jail and copying the config directory to a new location. I did use a new dataset like Dopamin3 suggested, but I didn’t want to keep it there permanently. In the jail, all the configuration and metadata seem to be inside this folder: /mnt/Pool/iocage/jails/plex/root/Plex Media Server
In TrueNAS Scale, the folder showed up here: /mnt/.ix-apps/app_mounts/plex/config/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server
I used this command to copy it all to the backup location: cp -Ripv -f "/mnt/Pool/iocage/jails/plex/root/Plex Media Server" "/mnt/Pool/Plex_Backup/Plex Media Server/"
My media libraries were at /volume1/Video in the jail, so when I installed the app that’s what I set to be the Mount Path, while the Host Path was /mnt/Pool/Video. Then before I started Plex running I deleted the new configuration folder, and copied from the backup into its place: rm -r "/mnt/.ix-apps/app_mounts/plex/config/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server" cp -Ripv -f "/mnt/Pool/Plex_Backup/Plex Media Server/" "/mnt/.ix-apps/app_mounts/plex/config/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server"
When I did start Plex the last time, it seemed a bit confused, it acted like I had no libraries or services, my home screen was blank, but poking through the settings I found the libraries were there, I just needed to set up how I wanted them to show up on the side. After that, the second time I loaded Plex it then put up all of my Continue Watching and Recently Added sections came back and were where they needed to be.
I think I also did some owner and permissions things as well, to make sure my apps user had full permissions for the copied configuration files. These two posts helped me a lot with those commands (my apps user ID is 568; these threads mention user ID 1000):
www. truenas. com /community/threads/migrating-plex-from-core-to-scale.108898/
www. truenas. com community/threads/moving-plex-from-core-to-scale.91936/
Getting the metadata is key, as others have pointed out.
I am feeling shaky about the user to use with Plex on CE. But … whatever I’m doing now is working, so, good enough.
My dataset for metadata is a general / apps dataset - the theory being that this wouldn’t work well as an SMB dataset, and I had no reason to share it.
My dataset for media is an SMB dataset, for easy access on PCs.
Lastly, I think you may as well go immediately for CE instead of going through SCALE first. CE changes how virtualization works - while that doesn’t impact apps like Plex, why have another migration ahead of you in case you want to dabble with LXC or VMs.
SCALE is obviously still around for a little while. By the lifecycle doc, the most recent two releases get engineering attention: Which means as of CE 25.10, SCALE will be legacy. That’s in 4 months.
Go for CE 25.04 now and upgrade to 25.10 when available, for the improved and refined Instance support. Use apps now and dabble in instances if you like; then lean into instances (LXC and VMs) with 25.10, if they’re useful to you. Is my 2 cents.