I recently installed Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on a Mac Mini (2012) with added Ram and a new SSD (my content is on external hard drive). I did try to install the Plex Server from the Plex website, but i was unable to add it to the Ubuntu update app. I did look for help online, but was unable to find the solution. So i decided to uninstall everything and ask for help here.
Should i install Plex Server from the snap app store since it’s seem more simple ? Should i install it from the website and if so, how exactly ?
I’m new to Ubuntu, so sorry if thats seem evident.
The snap version of Plex uses different paths and so on, so if you need to look up any details for troubleshooting it’s harder to find the info. snap seems to be a worthless complication and it is barely any easier to actually install.
I just tried again to install Plex. The installation was ok, but i cant enabled the automatic repository updates… I did modify the file text to delete the “#” (now it’s only
‘deb https://downloads.plex.tv/repo/deb/ public main’ in that file), but now, when i check for updates, i got an error message saying to verify my internet… If i uncheck the address in the “Other software” section, now everything works great…
Do you have an idea of whats happening ?
For Snap, thats good to know… I will avoid it then.
I’m doing it in the GUI. I did try to use sudo apt update and i also get an error. I will try to copy the error i got when i use “sudo apt-get update” (my Ubuntu is in French, so sorry in advance) :
“MyComputer:-$ sudo apt-get update [sudo]
Mot de passe de pl-mini :
Atteint :1 Index of /ubuntu noble InRelease
Réception de :2 Index of /ubuntu noble-updates InRelease [126 kB]
Atteint : 3 https://downloads.plex. tv/repo/deb public InRelease Atteint :4 Index of /ubuntu noble-security InRelease
Atteint :5 Index of /ubuntu noble-backports InRelease
Err :3 https://downloads.plex. tv/repo/deb public InRelease
Les signatures suivantes n’ont pas pu être vérifiées car la clé publique n’est pas disponible : NO_PUBKEY 97(etc…) 126 ko réceptionnés en 1s (228 ko/s)
Lecture des listes de paquets… Fait
W: Une erreur s’est produite lors du contrôle de la signature. Le dépôt n’est pas mis à jour et les fichiers d’index précédents seront utilisés.
Erreur de GPG : https: //downloads.plex. tv/repo/deb public InRelease : Les signatures suivantes n’ont pas pu être vérifiées car la clé publique n’est pas disponible : NO_PUBKEY 97(etc…)
W: Impossible de récupérer https: //downloads.plex. tv/repo/deb/dists/publie/InRelease Les signatures suivantes nIont pas pu être vérifiées car la clé publique n’est pas disponible : NO_PUBKEY 97(etc…)
W: Le téléchargement de quelques fichiers d’index a échoué, ils ont été ignorés, ou les anciens ont été utilisés à la place.”
That’s what happens when i use that line of code.
A quick traduction would be that the signature could not be verified because the public key is not available.
Hello and thanks for your answer ! How can i disable the repo ? (sorry i’m a noobs on Linux and Plex). You mean if i uncheck the box in the update requisitory ?
You did things right, the system should have configured itself with the right key. Chuck’s explanation makes sense. Disable the repo (add # to the beginning of the line) and wait a while.
[chuck@glockner ~.2009]$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plexmediaserver.list
# When enabling this repo please remember to add the PlexPublic.Key into the apt setup.
# wget -q https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-keys/PlexSign.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -
#deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/plexmediaserver512.gpg] https://downloads.plex.tv/repo/deb/ public main
[chuck@glockner ~.2010]$
I now have a new problem… The first time i tried Plex on Ubuntu, i was able to add my 2 external hard drives to the Plex server. Now tho, Plex doesn’t see anything in the drives. I tried to modify the access on the drives with this command :
sudo chown -R plex:plex /path/to/media/directory without success (i got a message saying i dont have the acces for doing that)
Yes, it was just an example, i did change the path for my hard drive :p. I got an error message saying for all the files on my drive that i dont have the access necessary to change the permission.
No, the files are on two external hard drives… Here is what i write for one of them for example : “sudo chown -R plex:plex /media/MyUsername/Movies”.
When i do that, the terminal ask for my password and after that, i receive for every files and folder on my drive this message
"chown: modification of the owner of “/media/MyUsername/Movies/Folder/NameOfTheMovie : Operation not permitted”.
Sorry if my traduction of certains words are not perfect. I will try to format one of my drive and see after that what happen. I did install Ubuntu again in case there was a problem with my last installation, but that didn’t change anything.
It’s telling me the drive is formatted for Windows. Windows doesn’t understand assigning the concept of ownership to files so it’s not supported by the filesystem.
When you attempt to assign ownership, you get “Operation not permitted”.
“Operation not permitted” is vastly different than “permission denied”
One means “it can’t be done” versus “you don’t have permission to do that”
Linux is like that. lots of fine, but significant, details.
Right now, the format is exFat. for the external hd. The first time, Plex did see what was inside the hard drives, but not after the reinstallation of my server. Should i have used another format ?
If you’re going to be exclusively Linux then you’ll want ext4 or xfs filesystem.
when you’re mixing operating systems, especially anything Windows with Linux, you must account for all the deficiencies inherent to Windows and its single-user per machine premise.
I’ve written a how-to which will show you how to deal with the majority of those limitations as they relate to Plex.
ExFAT was a licensed filesystem. If it still is for you then you’ll need to install that driver separately. dpkg -l | grep -i exfat will tell you if the exfat filesystem driver is installed.
So i did try a few things… First, i formatted one of my external hard drive to ext4, and transferred a bit of my tv shows on the hard drive in my computer. After that, i added some files on the external hard drive and tried again to add the external hard drive and the files on the computer to Plex. That didn’t work… Plex dont see any folders in my external hard drive…
I tried again the code line “sudo chown -R plex:plex /path/to/media/directory” on the folder in my external hard drive. Now the folder is locked and i can only see the files on it… I can see that the “plex” group have acces to it.
But if i try to add that folder on my plex server, same problem, he can’t see the folders, just the drive itself.
100% a permissions problem. (you see the top of the directory but cannot read the directory)
That didn’t work… Plex dont see any folders in my external hard drive…
Did you follow this procedure?
Common mistakes:
Letting the USB be discovered and automounted to end up in /media/My_username/Disk_name
Manually mounting it via /etc/fstab but FORGETTING to set the permissions of the mount-point directory BEFORE the mount. (you do set permissions twice)
