Music files not appearing in library

[SeiryuX]

Server Version#: 1.27.2.5929 (FreeNAS, Latest)
Player Version#: 4.76.1 (Plex Web, Latest)

I am unable to get Plex to show any new music files I attempt to add to the library.

A couple months ago I had a failure that resulted in needing to reconstruct my library from scratch on a clean install of Plex (I didn’t lose any media, just the server settings and libraries). I added a few music albums (17 artists, 27 albums, 266 tracks) to a library a while back, then had an interruption and stopped working on it for a while. Now for the past few weeks I can’t add any new files.

The weird thing is, no matter what I do it still sees what I added before and nothing else. I have tried:

Scanner/Agent: Plex Music, Prefer Local Metadata off
Scanner/Agent: Plex Music, Prefer Local Metadata on
Scanner: Plex Music Scanner, Agent: Personal Media Artists, Prefer Local Metadata off
Scanner: Plex Music Scanner, Agent: Personal Media Artists, Prefer Local Metadata on
I’ve deleted the library entirely and made a new one.
I’ve moved all files to a different folder and changed the media source.
I’ve optimized the database and cleaned bundles each time I made a change.

No matter what I do it just brings back the 266 tracks I added before and nothing new. The scanner does go through all folders, and in folder view Plex shows all of them (94 folders/artists) but aside from the 17 artists added before the other folders show as empty.

I have my folder structures and file names correct for Plex formatting. I use MusicBrainz Picard to organize files and add metadata tags, so everything should be right on the media side of things.

I just have no idea what changed between when I added those first 27 albums and now. It makes no sense to me that no matter what I do or what I change it still sees those 27 albums and nothing else. You’d think that whatever is making it remember those albums would be cleared by some combination of changing media folders cleaning bundles, etc. I’d have expected whatever is causing the problem to eventually make it show no files at all, but no. After trying everything I can think of it still sees those 266 tracks but refuses to show anything else.

I’ve tried searching for an answer, but I can’t find anyone talking about any similar problems, and I am at a loss. Hopefully this makes enough sense for someone to suggest a solution. If you need any logs or screenshots or additional information please let me know.

Thanks.

[dbirch]

perform a scan and post your server logs, along with the exact path and filename of one of the files not being scanned.

[SeiryuX]

Plex Media Server Logs_2022-07-08_11-28-28.zip (6.5 MB)

\Music\A Perfect Circle\Mer de noms [CD]\01 - The Hollow.flac

Here are the logs and a file path (note: Plex is pointed to the Music folder as the library source, so anything before that in the path should be irrelevant and has been omitted).

Just to double check I reviewed the file naming guidelines and saw that I had a minor error in my file names. I had the format of “%track #% %track title%.ext” rather than “%track #% - %track title%.ext”. I didn’t think the lack of a hyphen could be the issue, but to be safe I changed the default naming format in MusicBrainz Picard and renamed all my files to match the Plex naming guidelines exactly, but that did not solve the issue.

Also, this may have been inferred from the original post but I forgot to mention that this issue is exclusively affecting music libraries, all TV, movie & other video libraries are working normally.

Thanks.

[dbirch]

permissions issue [0x805a18000] ERROR - IsDirectory failed boost::filesystem::status: Permission denied: "/media/Music/A Perfect Circle/Mer de noms [CD]/01 The Hollow.flac"

[SeiryuX]

Well, I still have no idea why this issue only affected audio files, but it seems to be resolved now.

I don’t remember the specific details, but I recall having another permissions issue at one point when I was in the process of reinstalling Plex Media Server on my FreeNAS server. The solution at the time was to create a group/user for plex in FreeNAS under GID/UID 972.

Just now when I checked the permissions for one of the files it does show and one it doesn’t I found that the ones it wasn’t showing did not have that user listed in their permissions at all while the ones it shows did. By setting the top level Music folder to force all subfolders and files to inherit permissions from that top level folder that fixed it.

Still absolutely no clue why it was applying the wrong permissions to newly added audio files while handling all video files correctly, but I guess as long as it works now that’s all that matters.

Thanks.

[SeiryuX]

Un-solving this even though I think the issue now may be something with FreeNAS rather than Plex directly. Hopefully someone here can give me some help regardless.

I thought the issue was solved, which it sort of is, but the fix of changing permissions for the Music folder and all of it’s subfolders and files only fixed it for things currently in that folder. Every time I add new files to the folder I have to update the permissions again, which is a bit annoying.

Can anyone give me an idea as to why the permissions are not working properly on audio files (but work fine on video)? Should I go to a FreeNAS specific community to look for help?

Thanks.

[dbirch]

however you are adding the files its setting the permissions wrong