Linux Desktop (snap) won't start

Plex Players Desktop Players
1

Server Version#: 1.24.3.5033
Player Version#: latest
I installed the snap desktop player for Ubuntu 20 (via apt) and it says it is installed but when I try to start it nothing happens. Same after reboot.
Ideas?

1 Like
2

What do the logs say? Usually that has the best indication as to what is going on.

3

I too am having the plex-desktop snap immediately crashing. When run from terminal I get “Aborted (core dumped)”. I’m happy to supply logs if you let me know which ones would be helpful.

4

I’m getting this same error on Fedora 35 (Gnome w/ Wayland). I took a look at my logs, and it seems like a Wayland issue for me. I was able to get it to start by running DISABLE_WAYLAND=1 snap run plex-desktop, but obviously this isn’t ideal.

Here’s the log I get after running snap run plex-desktop:

May 26, 2022 15:23:41.576 [0x7fd7c4317700] INFO - Running on: Ubuntu Core 20 [5.17.6-200.fc35.x86_64] x86_64
May 26, 2022 15:23:41.576 [0x7fd7c4317700] INFO - Happy Plexing!
May 26, 2022 15:23:41.575 [0x7fd7c43188c0] INFO - [OpenGL] Selected desktop renderer.
May 26, 2022 15:23:41.575 [0x7fd7c43188c0] INFO - [OpenGL] Default surface format version: 2.0
May 26, 2022 15:23:41.575 [0x7fd7c43188c0] INFO - [OpenGL] Selecting surface format version: 2.0; profile: 1
May 26, 2022 15:23:41.575 [0x7fd7c43188c0] INFO - Warning: Ignoring XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland on Gnome. Use QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland to run on Wayland anyway.
May 26, 2022 15:23:41.576 [0x7fd7c43188c0] WARN - Could not find the Qt platform plugin "wayland-egl" in "/snap/plex-desktop/8/plugins/platforms:"
May 26, 2022 15:23:41.576 [0x7fd7c43188c0] ERROR - This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

Available platform plugins are: eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, xcb.```
5

Running Ubuntu 22.04 (Wayland)

Might be an ‘apparmour’ conflict?

When I run it normally I just get an “Aborted (core dumped)” error
syslog :

May 26 21:58:36 asus systemd[3331]: Started snap.plex-desktop.plex-desktop.0e6ae352-0e0d-4c30-adb2-e1b79524f30b.scope.
May 26 21:58:36 asus kernel: [41702.492609] audit: type=1400 audit(1653598716.301:117): apparmor="DENIED" operation="open" profile="snap.plex-desktop.plex-desktop" name="/home/S0l/Documents/" pid=94054 comm="head" requested_mask="r" denied_mask="r" fsuid=1000 ouid=1000

When I run the snap as root I get the following error :

mkdir: cannot create directory '/run/user/0': Permission denied
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/run/user/0’: Permission denied
cp: cannot stat '/snap/plex-desktop/8/usr/share/mime': No such file or directory
Directory '/root/snap/plex-desktop/8/.local/share/mime/packages' does not exist!
ERROR: update-mime-database /root/snap/plex-desktop/8/.local/share/mime exited abnormally with status 1
Authorization required, but no authorization protocol specified

Syslog :

May 26 21:59:33 asus systemd[1]: Started snap.plex-desktop.plex-desktop.9cf0eb44-2464-4246-bafd-867167fc7801.scope.
May 26 21:59:33 asus kernel: [41759.256131] audit: type=1400 audit(1653598773.065:118): apparmor="DENIED" operation="mkdir" profile="snap.plex-desktop.plex-desktop" name="/run/user/0/" pid=94370 comm="mkdir" requested_mask="c" denied_mask="c" fsuid=0 ouid=0
May 26 21:59:33 asus kernel: [41759.307288] audit: type=1400 audit(1653598773.117:119): apparmor="DENIED" operation="mkdir" profile="snap.plex-desktop.plex-desktop" name="/run/user/0/" pid=94437 comm="mkdir" requested_mask="c" denied_mask="c" fsuid=0 ouid=0
May 26 21:59:33 asus kernel: [41759.377427] audit: type=1400 audit(1653598773.185:120): apparmor="DENIED" operation="capable" profile="snap.plex-desktop.plex-desktop" pid=94513 comm="Plex" capability=2  capname="dac_read_search"
May 26 21:59:33 asus kernel: [41759.377434] audit: type=1400 audit(1653598773.185:121): apparmor="DENIED" operation="capable" profile="snap.plex-desktop.plex-desktop" pid=94513 comm="Plex" capability=1  capname="dac_override"
May 26 21:59:33 asus systemd[1]: snap.plex-desktop.plex-desktop.9cf0eb44-2464-4246-bafd-867167fc7801.scope: Deactivated successfully.
1 Like
6

Same issue. Ubuntu 22.04 Wayland. If I switch to Xorg, app starts properly or disable walany only when execute app. In terminal:

DISABLE_WAYLAND=1 plex-desktop
7

Arch Linux and Sway (wayland)
Same problem here, only starts with

DISABLE_WAYLAND=1 snap run plex-desktop
1 Like
8

Same for me. Without disabling Wayland get:
Aborted (core dumped)

9

This is unfortunately expected on Wayland. The next major version of Qt should make things better but we are currently blocked from using it due to a build bug on one of the platforms. Hopefully soon we can upgrade Qt and thus resolve this issue.

10

Same here on Ubuntu 22.04

1 Like
11

Is there a reason why Plex chose AppImage for Plexamp, but snap for plex-desktop(-htpc)?
ps: now DISABLE_WAYLAND=1 snap run plex-desktop doesn’t work anymore.

12

This is annoying as hell. This affects so many people because the most popular distros like Ubuntu won’t run the app out of the box. What makes it worse is that the user is not informed about this fact even though we talk about something as fundamental as launching the app itself. Casual users are basically locked out because many of them will never visit this forum.

4 Likes
13

Yeah this is bad
really bad. Man, Plex seems to spend tons of time on dumb stuff like new logos these days and zero time on things like this that are actually important for the product to, ya know
work.

All of that pretty marketing garbage, the “streaming struggle” bs that has been gracing the top of the plex website, it’s all meaningless if the actual software doesn’t run the way it’s supposed to.

1 Like
14

I have same problem, and what is interesting I installed Fletpak on Ubuntu and installed Plex-HTPC from Flatpak app store and it is working imminently, without problem!!!
Before that, I could not run Plex Desktop or Plex-HTPC installed from snap?!?!

15

Any news about this?

16

As far as I can see, it is still not fixed. The same problem still exists on plex-desktop and plex-htps versions. I am almost at the point of trying older version if I can find it still on snap.

DISABLE_WAYLAND=1 snap run plex-desktop
mkdir: cannot create directory '/run/user/0': Permission denied
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/run/user/0’: Permission denied
cp: cannot stat '/snap/plex-desktop/14/usr/share/mime': No such file or directory
Directory '/root/snap/plex-desktop/14/.local/share/mime/packages' does not exist!
ERROR: update-mime-database /root/snap/plex-desktop/14/.local/share/mime exited abnormally with status 1
Authorization required, but no authorization protocol specified
Aborted (core dumped)
17

Right, so much for option of using older version

mynamea@HP-840-G7:~/Downloads$ snap find plex-htpc
Name       Version  Publisher  Notes  Summary
plex-htpc  1.22.1   plexinc✓   -      Plex HTPC client for Linux

mynamea@HP-840-G7:~/Downloads$ snap find plex-desktop
Name          Version  Publisher  Notes  Summary
plex-desktop  1.50.1   plexinc✓   -      Plex client for Linux

mynamea@HP-840-G7:~/Downloads$ snap info plex-htpc
name:      plex-htpc
summary:   Plex HTPC client for Linux
publisher: Plex, Inc. (plexinc✓)
store-url: https://snapcraft.io/plex-htpc
contact:   https://plex.tv
license:   Proprietary
description: |
  Plex HTPC for Linux is your client for playing on your Linux computer connected to the big screen.
  It features a 10-foot interface with a powerful playback engine.
snap-id: 81OP06hEXlwmMrpMAhe5hyLy5bQ9q6Kz
channels:
  latest/stable:    1.22.1 2022-07-28 (15) 317MB -
  latest/candidate: ↑                            
  latest/beta:      ↑                            
  latest/edge:      1.20.1 2022-06-29 (12) 302MB -
18

so 
 for those who care - edge version seems to still be able to run with WAYLAND disabled. I will need to add that command to shortcut but otherwise it is usable. No way to do that with non-edge version and desktop version it seems

myname@HP-840-G7:~/Downloads$ sudo snap install plex-htpc --edge
plex-htpc (edge) 1.20.1 from Plex, Inc. (plexinc✓) installed

myname@HP-840-G7:~/Downloads$ plex-htpc 
Wayland is currently unsupported
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

myname@HP-840-G7:~/Downloads$ DISABLE_WAYLAND=1 snap run plex-htpc
Wayland is currently unsupported
Cannot load libcuda.so.1
[113414:113454:0806/212128.804112:ERROR:gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(10693)] [.WebGL-0x5616cddcd540]RENDER WARNING: there is no texture bound to the unit 1
[113414:113454:0806/212128.813475:ERROR:gles2_cmd_decoder.cc(10693)] [.WebGL-0x5616cddcd540]RENDER WARNING: there is no texture bound to the unit 1
19

Both issue and work around (DISABLE_WAYLAND=1 snap run plex-desktop) confirmed.

Most convenient way to resolve is by adding the environment variable to /var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/plex-desktop_plex-desktop.desktop as in:

[Desktop Entry]
X-SnapInstanceName=plex-desktop
Type=Application
Name=Plex
Comment=
Exec=env DISABLE_WAYLAND=1 BAMF_DESKTOP_FILE_HINT=/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/plex-desktop_plex-desktop.desktop /snap/bin/plex-desktop
Icon=/snap/plex-desktop/16/meta/gui/icon.png
Terminal=false
Categories=Audio;Music;Video;Player;Media;
3 Likes
20

Thanks, good suggestion!