PLEX on NAS542

It doesn't make much sense to copy & paste that code. It is intended to run in a script, and that script is already on your box. I only posted it as reference where the error message comes from.

The error is about extracting an archive which is inside another archive. So it can hardly be corrupted, else the first stage would have failed.

Did you have a look at 'dmesg' to see if there are filesystem or hardware errors?

That file show the log since boot, 67 hours ago. It does not show any filesystem or hardware errors. So if you tried to install Plex within that 67 hours, that is not the problem.

So I downloaded PlexMediaServer-1.40.2.8395-c67dce28e-armv7neon_DSM7.spk, and tried to extract that manually on my NAS520. There is a bug in either the file or in tar, or both.

/bin/tar xf ../package.tgz 

tar: warning: skipping header 'x'

tar: warning: skipping header 'x'

tar: warning: skipping header 'x'

<repeated 160 times>

tar: warning: skipping header 'x'

tar: can't remove old file ./Resources/Plug-ins-c67dce28e/Framework.bundle/Contents/Resources/Platforms/Shared/Libraries/Restri: Is a directory

I have no idea why tar would try to delete a file. But it is right, the file is a directory. The directory …/Resources contains a file Beauti and a directory Restri. The file Beauti is a python file. Restri is empty. Both names seem to be truncated.

I tried with gnu tar (in contrast with the busybox tar on the box) which didn't throw an error (and didn't warn about header 'x'). Now there is more in the …/Resources directory:

$ ls -l

-rw-r--r--    1 admin    everyone     79478 Apr 18 15:21 Beauti

-rw-r--r--    1 admin    everyone     79478 Apr 18 15:21 BeautifulSoup.py

drwxr-xr-x    2 admin    everyone      4096 Apr 18 15:22 Restri

drwxr-xr-x    3 admin    everyone      4096 Apr 18 15:22 RestrictedPython

-rwxr-xr-x    1 admin    everyone      2650 Apr 18 15:21 binascii_plus.py

drwxr-xr-x    2 admin    everyone      4096 Apr 18 15:22 cerealizer

drwxr-xr-x    6 admin    everyone      4096 Apr 18 15:22 crypto

-rw-r--r--    1 admin    everyone      2900 Apr 18 15:21 daemon.py

drwxr-xr-x    3 admin    everyone      4096 Apr 18 15:22 dateutil

-rw-r--r--    1 admin    everyone     87945 Apr 18 15:21 demjson.py

-rwxr-xr-x    1 admin    everyone     26657 Apr 18 15:21 fcrypt.py

-rw-r--r--    1 admin    everyone    167075 Apr 18 15:21 feedparser.py

drwxr-xr-x    6 admin    everyone      4096 Apr 18 15:22 pyamf

drwxr-xr-x    2 admin    everyone      4096 Apr 18 15:22 routes

-rw-r--r--    1 admin    everyone     45471 Apr 18 15:21 subprocess_new.py

-rw-r--r--    1 admin    everyone     32759 Apr 18 15:21 threading_new.py

drwxr-xr-x    3 admin    everyone      4096 Apr 18 15:22 tornado

-rw-r--r--    1 admin    everyone      2257 Apr 18 15:21 xpython.py

The file Beauti is identical to BeautifulSoup.py. The directory RestrictedPython is not empty. So clearly the file package.tgz contains some strange entries, which chokes busybox tar.

Try another Plex package.

I have never seen such a ridiculous company when different brands are so easy to install and use.

Well, what can I say. If you bought a ZyXEL for their perfect Plex support, you bought the wrong brand. But to blame them for that is a bit unfair. AFAIK you don't 'get a license' for Plex, Plex has to support your brand. And for ZyXEL Plex simply doesn't. And ZyXEL is not alone. According to the Plex download page Plex has (sometimes partly) support for Asustor, Drobo, FreeNAS, Netgear, QNAP, Seagate, Synology, TerraMaster, Thecus, unRAID and Western Digital. Where FreeNAS and unRAID are not brands, but operating systems. And Drobo doesn't exist anymore.

I looked at a random price comparison website to see which NAS brands are available today, and that are Asustor, eufy, Hikvision, QNAP, Synology, WD, Abus, Amber, Axis, Blackmagic Design, Buffalo, D-Link, Dahua, Dell, Digitus, Fantec, Foscam, Fujitsu, HGST, HiLook, HP, HPE, IBM, Imou, Iomega, ioSafe, Jovision, Lenovo, LevelOne, Lupus Electronics, Mobotix, Netgear, Origin Storage, Promise, QSAN, Reolink, Seagate, Sweex, Tandberg Data, Terra, TerraMaster, Thecus, Totolink, TP-Link, Transcend, Trendnet, Ubiquiti, Vimtag, Vivotek and ZyXEL.

I must admit, a lot of them are unknown to me, but yet they sell NASses, and most brands are not supported by Plex.

Years ago barmalej2 found out how to install a Synology or Netgear package on a ZyXEL. That is more than simply extracting it, both packages have some expectations about the environment they are running in, and that has to be mimicked. I wrote his findings in a script, and later converted that script to an installable package. Now it seems Plex has build an tar package which cannot be extracted by the firmware tar. What do you expect me to do? I could repackage it, but I'm not allowed to redistribute that. You could repackage it, and use it for yourself.

Basically the installing of Plex is the unpacking of package.tgz, which is packed in the Plex_bladibla.ipk, which is a tgz file itself. The unpacking of package.tgz throws an error. But when unpacked with another tar, it works. So it might work if you unpack and repack the whole stuff.

It is possible that that has to be done in Linux (or WSL on Windows) because there might be symlinks in the file, which is not supported by Windows filesystems. Unpacking on a Mac should be fine either.

The problem is clear. The firmware tar is not able to unpack the package.tgz file. A solution could be to repack the spk file on a more mature Linux system. (Didn't test that, I'm don't use Plex myself.) But I can't provide a repacked file because I'm not allowed to redistribute Plex.