I am new to plex and just launched my plex media server on my Ubuntu 20.04 server. I have attached a USB drive with all of my media on it. I created libraries, pointed to my drive, and nothing is showing up on my library even after doing a manual scan.
Been trying help and forums and haven’t found anything that looks close. It seems that I have named my directories wrong. Tried creating a new directory to support the proper names and re-scanned. Still nothing. Here’s a dump from my directory:
thomas@Westeros:/media/thomas/Seagate Backup Plus Drive/Media/Movies$ ls
'2010-The Year we Make Contact.m4v'
'39 Steps.m4v'
'About Schmidt (2002).m4v'
'A Bridge Too Far.m4v'
'A Cars Life-Sparkys Big Adventure.m4v'
'A Few Good Men.m4v'
'Against A Crooked Sky.m4v'
Airplane.m4v
'A League of their Own.m4v'
'Alvin And The Chipmunks.m4v'
'American Dreamz.mp4'
'Americas Sweethearts.m4v'
'AMorePerfectUnion(Education Edition).mp4'
'Analyze This.m4v'
'Andrea Bocelli-A Night in Tuscany.m4v'
'Andrea Bocelli-Under a Tuscan Sky-1.m4v'
'Andrea Bocelli-Under a Tuscan Sky-2.m4v'
AndreaBocelli-Vivere.mp4
'AnnieMosesBand-Pilgrims and Prodigals.m4v'
'Ant Bully.m4v'
Apostle.m4v
'April and Jerden.mp4'
Atonement.m4v
avatar.mp4
'A Walk To Remember.m4v'
'Beat the Devil.m4v'
Bella.m4v
'Beyond The Sea.m4v'
Blackmail.m4v
'Broken Arrow.m4v'
'Bullet to Beijing.m4v'
Casablanca.m4v
'Cats And Dogs.m4v'
Champagne.m4v
'Changing Habits.m4v'
Charade.m4v
'Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.m4v'
'Charlie Wilsons War.m4v'
'Cheney Vase.m4v'
'ChondaPierce-Stayin Alive Laughing.m4v'
Cliffhanger.m4v
'Comanche Moon-E03.m4v'
'Company Business.m4v'
Contact.m4v
'Crazy Stupid Love.m4v'
'Crimson Tide.m4v'
Cyrano.mp4
'Dark Passage.m4v'
Deathtrap.m4v
'Decade You Were Born 60s-2.m4v'
By default, because of the ACLs associated with it, only your user can access files under /media/pi. This is due to the way the disk is automatically mounted. The recommended way to use extra disks with Plex Media Server is to create static mount points and the necessary entries to mount them there in /etc/fstab. That method is described in @ChuckPa’s Linux Tips post:
There are ways to modify the default ACLs associated with the auto-mount location, if you’re interested in trying that instead. In your case, the command would be:
sudo setfacl -m u:plex:rx /media/thomas
This gives plex read and execute permissions to that directory. Assuming the permissions on the files and directories beneath are suitable, this will give PMS all the rights it needs to see your media.
While setfacl is one solution, there’s also a problem.
If PMS starts before you log in AND you’re using the automounter (which is how disks get put in /media/<username>,
THEN
The media will not be mounted and available when Plex starts.
As the direct result,
Your media will minimally be marked as UNAVAILBLE until you log in.
At worst case, your media will be removed from the library (if automatic updating and Empty-Trash are enabled).
This is because Plex runs as a system service and is started before Gnome Desktop Session is launched. Plex is set to run independent of a user being logged in. (this isn’t Windows)
Agreed. Static mounts should always be preferred, particularly if the disk is more or less permanently dedicated to the system. That’s why I always lead with the how-to. However, I’ll be sure to note this caveat to the setfacl method in the future.
