Most episodes aren't showing up

Plex Media Server Metadata & Adding Files
1

Right now I did a test adding Rick and Morty all seasons to my plex. Only the first episode is showing up on season 1. Season 2 and 3 are missing, and Season 4 is almost all there but missing episode 4.

I tried refreshing my browser with both a SHIFT-REFRESH and an ALT-REFRESH and still my episodes are missing.

Server Version#: 1.18.7.2457
Player Version#: Web

Here is my server logs and databasePlex Media Server Logs_2020-03-11_23-34-53.zip (565.3 KB) Plex Media Server Databases_2020-03-11_23-34-56.zip (40.1 KB)

2

User plex doesn’t have access to the files.

Mar 11, 2020 20:44:14.141 [0x7f8994ff9700] ERROR - IsDirectory failed boost::filesystem::status: Permission denied: "/home/josh/plexmedia/tv/Star Trek- Picard"
Mar 11, 2020 20:44:16.539 [0x7f89d2ffd700] DEBUG - Auth: authenticated user 1 as rish@wealthy.org

There is also (which the DVR will use)

Mar 11, 2020 20:44:16.772 [0x7f8997fff700] ERROR - Couldn't check for the existence of file "/home/josh/plexmedia/tv/.grab": boost::filesystem::status: Permission denied: "/home/josh/plexmedia/tv/.grab"

Let’s take this in small steps and see if we can get things starting to work then fine tune the permissions and setup the inheritance so it will work by itself.

I’m assuming you’re doing this as username josh since the media is in /home/josh.
If not, let me know .

find /home/josh/plexmedia -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find /home/josh/plexmedia -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find /home/josh/plexmedia -name .grab -exec chmod 777 {} \;

These commands do:

  1. Find all the subdirectories in plexmedia and below , set those permissions so you have RXW and plex can R-X (read & traverse)
  2. Find all the files in plexmedia and below, set those permissions so you have R/W and plex has read-only.
  3. Find the .grab directories and set their permissions (for now) to rwxrwxrwx

Now scan files.
You may need to Refresh All Metadata.

3

That worked! Now I need to tune it to where it does it by itself.

4

It’s all right here in Linux Tips (tag)

5

I added my username and the username plex to the user group “media”, and set my media folder’s group to media and i still have to run those CHMOD commands to get it to find new media.

6

So I added a chronjob to run those commands every 30 minutes. But I feel as my library gets bigger, it will bog down the server more and more to run those commands. My folder is named plexmedia under /home/josh/plexmedia , but even though I added the username josh and the username plex to the group “media” then ran sudo chgrp -R media /home/josh/plexmedia , it still does not import episodes unless I run those CHMOD commands.

7

this is why you use the inheritance flags ( setUID and setGID ). By doing so, the permissions are set by the operation system when the file is created.

It’s a completely passive operation.

Did you actually follow the example I gave as I wrote it (to play with in /tmp) ?

If you used another location (a dummy directory somewhere),
you can setup the permissions then, as demonstration, copy a file into it. Don’t use -rp in the copy. just let it take the default permissions.

8

I followed exactly the way your guide tells me. I don’t know where I do the setuid and setgid tags though. Do I have to use that tag every time I import media? Because I am having Radarr do that for me.

What I did, hopefully it works, is I went into advanced settings of Radarr, and had it to where every time it did an import, chmod files to 755 and chmod folders to 644

9

Right here: (In most cases the g+s is more than enough)

$ sudo find ./inherit -type d -exec chmod g+s {} \;

This sets the Group +s (inherit) flag on the file named within the {}.

The whole statement reads as:

  1. Using root privileges
  2. Find
  3. Starting with ./inherit and descending into that entire tree.
  4. All entries which are directories
  5. When one is found,
  6. Execute the command chmod g+s on that directory.
10

Supplemental:

You have folders and files backwards.

  1. Folders = 755
  2. Files = 644

The “x” is needed to traverse (go deeper – aka execute through) a directory.

11

Yeah I did that but it doesn’t repeat itself. Like I keep on having to run it when I add new media. I want to automate it somehow.

12

Is this on an EXT file system? It should “just work”.

Here, typos included :slight_smile:

[chuck@lizum ~.501]$ 
[chuck@lizum ~.501]$ 
[chuck@lizum ~.501]$ cd /tmp
[chuck@lizum /tmp.502]$ mkdir spontaneous
[chuck@lizum /tmp.503]$ sudo chgrp plex spontaneous
[chuck@lizum /tmp.504]$ sudo g+s spontaneous
sudo: g+s: command not found
[chuck@lizum /tmp.505]$ sudo chmod g+s spontaneous
[chuck@lizum /tmp.506]$ ls -la spontaneous
total 16
drwxr-sr-x  2 chuck plex  4096 Mar 12 18:23 ./
drwxrwxrwt 33 root  root 12288 Mar 12 18:23 ../
[chuck@lizum /tmp.507]$ touch spontaneous/example
[chuck@lizum /tmp.508]$ ls -la spontaneous
total 16
drwxr-sr-x  2 chuck plex  4096 Mar 12 18:24 ./
drwxrwxrwt 33 root  root 12288 Mar 12 18:23 ../
-rw-r--r--  1 chuck plex     0 Mar 12 18:24 example
[chuck@lizum /tmp.509]$

The directory has group plex assigned.
The group permissions are r.
The file can be read by Plex.

13

I am confused. Why would I make a directory in temp? are you saying I should move all my mediaa to a folder in the tmp directory? I am really confused. I am new to linux.

The plexmedia directory (in which my files are stored) is owned by the media group which includes both plex and my personal username.

So idk why the folders underneath respected directories when they’re created is also owned by media…

14

I am doing this in /tmp only because it’s disposable for me. We would apply the same flags to your real directories.

I’m trying to show you what the flags do – or did I misunderstand you?

15

Ah, i get it, as an example. Let me try that and see if it helps.

16

It seemed as if whenever I touched that new file, it was owned by root user and media group. So I think that should fix it then whenever radarr imports a file.

17

So another video imported, and even though it was root user and media group, plex wasn’t able to read it.

drwxr-xr-x  2 root media 4096 Mar 12 16:29 1917 (2019)
drwxr-sr-x  2 root media 4096 Mar 12 13:18 Ant-Man (2015)
drwxr-sr-x  2 josh media 4096 Mar 12 14:24 bollywood
drw-r--r--  2 root media 4096 Mar 12 17:37 Bombshell (2019)
drwxr-xr-x  2 root media 4096 Mar 12 17:24 Guns Akimbo (2019)
drwxr-sr-x  2 root media 4096 Mar 12 12:44 Half Baked (1998)
drwxr-sr-x  2 root media 4096 Mar 12 13:22 Jumanji The Next Level (2019)
drwxr-sr-x  2 root media 4096 Mar 12 13:08 Scarface (1983)
drwxr-sr-x  2 root media 4096 Mar 12 12:27 Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
drwxr-xr-x  2 root media 4096 Mar 12 17:03 The Big Lebowski (1998)
drwxr-sr-x  2 root media 4096 Mar 12 12:31 The Salton Sea (2002)

Ant-Man(2019) was the only media not showing in my plex. Now when I ran those CHMOD tricks you told me about, it worked.

So even though it’s owned by the media group, and plex is under the media group… plex still cannot read the files unless I CHMOD it to 755 and 644. Any idea?

18

ah,

so you are doing this as root? Yes, that’s how it will be. Everything will be a member of the media group.

When you look at permissions, of you go into The Salton Sea (2002), it should also be in the media group and ready to go.

19

Yeah, “The Salton Sea (2002)” does just fine and shows up. The only one NOT working is the one that just recently imported before running those CHMOD commands you gave me way earlier at the beginning of the thread.

If I run those commands it shows up, but I don’t want to have to do it every time. However, if I don’t run those commands, plex cannot read it despite plex being apart of the “media” group.

20

you’ll only need do it this time to get everything in line then it’s done.

I would like you to remove the permissions settings from Sonarr & Radarr.

The more I think about how they work, let’s let the file system do the job for us.
It’ll still come out exactly the same but the +s flag will propagate the way we want.