Migrating from Windows to Linux. Need guidance on mounting NTFS on Linux

[nighthawk23]

I previously had Plex Media Server on Windows 10 computer. I erased the OS disk and installed Proxmox for homelab purposes. I am trying to my server on Linux up and running but not sure how to best mount the NTFS drives with media in it.

I used this guide to do PCIe passthrough and install PMS on Ubuntu Server 24.04.1:

Master PCI Passthrough in Proxmox for Seamless Plex Hardware Transcoding –...

echo deb https://downloads.plex.tv/repo/deb public main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plexmediaserver.list

curl https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-keys/PlexSign.key | sudo apt-key add -

sudo apt update

sudo apt install plexmediaserver

In Proxmox Host, I am passing the entire drives to the Ubuntu VM and can see them via lsblk.

I installed ntfs-3g on the VM.
I then created /mnt/plex using sudo mkdir /mnt/plex. ls -ld shows ownership of the directory as root.

I am not really sure what options and permissions I need to give to mount command to temporarily mount the drive and what to put in /etc/fstab for mount to survive reboot. I can get UUID from blkid output but what about the rest of line?

Two objectives: 1) Plex Media Server should be able to play the media, and I should be able to delete media from the web console of PMS. That would probably require the plex user to have read write privileges ?

2. I want my own user to be able to write to the drive to upload new content.

Player Version#: Version 1.107.1.293-575aed08 on a Windows 11 machine for testing.

[pshanew]

I’m sure @ChuckPa will hop on to provide some guidance, but in the meantime have a look at their Tips & Tricks article addressing this question:

Linux Tips

Using other hard drives (Windows or Linux) with PMS This How-To is written to help with Internal and External drives. It also is written to demonstrate how to cope with NTFS and EXT4 formatted drives. By logical extension, any format supported by Linux can be handled using the technique shown here. In all cases, the goal is to give user plex permission to read your media files which Linux doesn’t allow by default due to its strict security model. We will walk through the steps needed …

It doesn’t discuss passing through hard disks to a VM guest, but it does address how to mount foreign disks in Linux using static mounts.

[nighthawk23]

@Linux Tips

# Mount Chuck-2T (NTFS) at /disks/chuck2t for Plex
UUID=56EA5848EA582691                     /disks/chuck2t ntfs  defaults,auto,rw,nofail 0 1

# Mount Chuck-2T (NTFS) at /disks/chuck2t for Plex
UUID=56EA5848EA582691                     /disks/chuck2t ntfs  defaults,auto,rw,nofail 0 1

I wonder if this allows only my user rw privileges or plex user or both?

[ChuckPa]

Please read the entire how-to

You will see where the mount point directories have permissions which allow Plex to read (755)

NTFS only suports 777 permissions

In my example, I show the name of the directory to use which is independent of the username

Please also note there is no username= referenced in the /etc/fstab entry.
The means root will perform the mount, control the mount.

You only need to :

1. `sudo mkdir /some/path (as long as it’s not a reserved path
2. Make your linux username the owner
   sudo chown myusername:myusernane /some /some/path
3. now test the mount
4. fix errors

To show you a working example, while these are XFS, they work with NTFS
(you don’t need the NTFS-3g in most cases)

These are SSDs in USB enclosures

# SATA
UUID=a44499a2-abc5-4dd4-a1fa-7b7a4cd1ae3d                      /sata      xfs     defaults,auto,noatime    0   3

# USB
UUID=3995eb4f-032a-47bc-86a7-55489ff9e6c5                      /usb       xfs     defaults,auto,noatime    0   4

[nighthawk23]

Thanks. plex user can read and write to the mounted drive now. In the tutorial you linked there is a section about systemd. Ubuntu 24 server is systemd based and many Linux distros have been systemd based for a while now. Do I need to do anything regarding that part? What’s the purpose of this section?

Customizing your Plex configuration on systemd based systems

[ChuckPa]

The post you should read is post #2.
Post #3 refers to customizing the config

Post #2 title: Using other hard drives (Windows or Linux) with PMS

[nighthawk23]

Yeah I understand. I read Post #2 and got NTFS drives mounted. What does customizing the config mean practically?. That’s what I am trying to understand and especially it refers to systemd Linux distros which I have.

[ChuckPa]

Ah, my apologies

Yes, as of Ubuntu 16, systemd became the standard.
There are still systems out there which use init.d .

The FAQ / Linux Tips speaks to both control mechanisms

The DEB and RPM installer still supports init.d installations even though init.d
usage is quickly fading away.

Example:

• Synology uses their version of systemd for host control
• QNAP still uses init.d

[nighthawk23]

So in my case of Ubuntu Server 24.04.1, I can start and stop the plexmediaserver.service using systemctl command. Do I need to make any modifications that are in Post#3 customizing the config?

[ChuckPa]

1. Starting and stopping PMS on Ubuntu →
   systemctl start/stop plexmediaserver

• You can make a symlink to make life easier if you want.

sudo bash
cd /lib/systemd/system
ln -s plexmediaserver.service plex.service
systemctl daemon-reload

• now you can use systemctl start/stop plex

2. If you want to change the runtime username or the location of the metadata
   (/var/lib is very small on some machines), you would create something like this which uses the systemd override.conf file.

[chuck@lizum shared.2051]$ cd /etc/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service.d/
[chuck@lizum plexmediaserver.service.d.2052]$ cat override.conf 
[Service]
Environment="PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_APPLICATION_SUPPORT_DIR=/usb/plex"
User=chuck
Group=chuck
[chuck@lizum plexmediaserver.service.d.2053]$ 

On this machine, PMS runs as my username with metadata on the /usb/plex filesystem (/usb is actually a USB 3.2 type C - NVMe SSD in a portable carrier)

What the symlink looks like in use.

[chuck@lizum ~.2054]$ sudo systemctl status plex
● plexmediaserver.service - Plex Media Server
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
    Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service.d
             └─override.conf
     Active: active (running) since Sun 2025-01-26 21:34:05 EST; 2 days ago
   Main PID: 33574 (Plex Media Serv)
      Tasks: 75 (limit: 76549)
     Memory: 30.8G
        CPU: 1h 46min 45.261s
     CGroup: /system.slice/plexmediaserver.service
             ├─ 33574 "/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server"
             ├─ 33606 "Plex Plug-in [com.plexapp.system]" /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Resources/Plug-ins-a0bfb8370/Framework.bundle/Contents/Resources/Versions/2/Python/bootstrap.py --server-version 1.41.3.9314-a0bfb>
             ├─ 33646 "/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Tuner Service" /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Resources/Tuner/Private /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Resources/Tuner/Shared 1.41.3.9314-a0bfb8370 32600
             └─134144 "Plex EAE Service"

Jan 26 21:34:05 lizum systemd[1]: Starting Plex Media Server...
Jan 26 21:34:05 lizum systemd[1]: Started Plex Media Server.
Jan 27 11:55:34 lizum Plex Media Server[134144]: Dolby, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and the double D symbol are trademarks of Dolby Laboratories.
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