Somehting weird is happening with my DVR. It says that it just recorded ‘How I met your mother’ (15:30-16:00). It also reports that it recorded ‘The Rookie’ (19:00-20:00). When I go to the recorded TV location I can see the ‘Met your mother’ file but I cannot see the Rookie file. Plex reports the rookie file as ‘unavialalbe’ on the get info page. It reports lots of stuff about the unavailable recording (packet length, color range, bit depth, etc) … but the file isn’t there.
In short … happy to record shows if the folder was there … but it doesn’t seem like it likes creating folders.
I just manually created a TV folder structure for the rookie (all 5 seasons). There is another EP on tonight (season 5, I believe) … will it save the file? Will the file be unavailable?
If I am right in my guess that plex can’t / doesn’t like creating folders … what can I do?
Server Version#: Version 1.29.1.6316
Player Version#: Version 4.93.3 (from plex web general
Tuner Make/Model: HD Home Run
Guide/Lineup name:
Using XMLTV?:
Channel number/Name: ABC (The Rookie)
Plex tries to create show folders as needed (it works for my Linux install.) It sound like you may have a permissions issue on your file system. Typical setups have the top TV library folder(s) owned by plex:plex so that the Plex server process has the rights it needs, though there are other approaches.
Is this a bare metal install or docker? Also, would you please post debug level server logs covering the time of a failure? The logs most likely will show a permission issue, but it helps to see the actual error Plex is receiving.
Update: Plex appears to have recorded the Season 5 EP of The Rookie. The EP is there when I look at the Plex Player. The file is missing / unavailable.
When I look at the folder structure I manually created last night, Seasons 01 thru 04 are still there but Season 05 is gone / deleted.
My plex install is on my TrueNAS 13.0-U3 server. It runs in a jail using ‘12.3-RELEASE-p7’
Dropping into putty, here is a dump of my Recorded TV folders …
drwxrwx---+ 7 FNXXX FNUsers uarch 7 Nov 6 21:18 ./
drwxrwx---+ 9 FNXXX FNUsers uarch 10 Nov 28 2021 ../
drwxrwx---+ 2 plex FNUsers uarch 2 Nov 7 00:02 .grab/
drwxrwx---+ 11 plex FNUsers uarch 11 Oct 30 23:32 How I Met Your Mother (2005)/
drwxrwx---+ 10 plex FNUsers uarch 10 Oct 31 17:01 Last Man Standing (2011)/
drwxrwx---+ 3 plex FNUsers uarch 3 Nov 3 23:35 Law & Order Organized Crime (2021)/
drwxrwx---+ 6 FNXXX FNUsers uarch 6 Nov 6 23:35 The Rookie (2018)/
… showing that plex does not own The Rookie folder. I set it up using explorer.
I am trying again with a 630 show (Arthor). This time I created the folder via bash and set the plex user as the owner.
drwxrwx---+ 8 FNXXX FNUsers uarch 8 Nov 7 06:19 ./
drwxrwx---+ 9 FNXXX FNUsers uarch 10 Nov 28 2021 ../
drwxrwx---+ 3 plex FNUsers uarch 3 Nov 7 06:30 .grab/
Logs attached. I scanned through it but don’t really know what I am looking for. I will google some to see if I can pick up how to read the logs / what to look for.
Good progress! (think I) know from a Linux standpoint what needs to be done. I haven’t used TruNAS or it’s jail function, so I’m hoping you will know how to execute.
Your problem looks like it is ownership since you have both your user and group permissions set to rwx. Conceptually we want everything under and including the “/recordedtv/Recorded TV” to be fully accessible (read, write, and delete) from the Plex server process, either by being owned by the plex user or by the plex group. The “Recorded TV” folder being owned by either user plex or group plex will allow the Plex server process to create new show folders when you record a show that you haven’t before. Having everything (folders and files) under that folder owned by user plex or group plex will allow the Plex server process to create new season folders, create and delete TV show files, etc.
This article may help. ChuckPA is allowing the Plex server process access via the plex group, while in cases where you have it working you are doing it with the plex user.
As far as logs, the ones we are interested in you can get by going to your Plex web, then under Settings->Troubleshooting click on “Download Logs”. If you can address the ownership there is a good chance it will resolve your issue.
Thanks for the reply and info about the logs … I will read up on how to read the logs.
Re the permissions issue … I added plex to my FNUsers group. I think this should solve it in the short term. It probably isn’t ideal in the longer term … but I will address that later (famous last words).
The FNUsers group is the default group that has access to my Recorded TV dataset. I just set up another record and will report back if it works. If it fails, then (I guess) the longer term will have to be now(ish).
Edit: I recorded Curious George at 9:30. Plex created the folder (Plex: FNUsers) and the file is still there. So … that is a fix … I will run another random recording test just to check.
