Server Version#: Version 1.13.9.5456-ecd600442
Player Version#: Version 3.73.2
I’m encountering a strange problem in that a newly added sub-folder nor its contents are appearing in any of my players. I renamed several of the various folders in the parent folder, and those all appear just fine, however the newly created folder called “Behind the Scenes” doesn’t appear. I’ve checked, and re-checked the permissions not only for the newly added folder but for the parent, as well as the Media folder, and they’re all correct (Owner=Admin, Plex=R/W, Group=Users).
In an attempt to resolve the issue, I’m bounced the service, carefully re-read “Synology FAQ’s … Read This First!” and confirmed everything there, scanned the library files, deleted the folder & emptied the trash on the PMS, copied it back and reconfirmed the permissions, but still no joy.
The folder in question is “/Media/How-To Videos/FStoppers/PtW4/Behind the Scenes”, with a media type of “other”
I can say this first before anything else: PLEX does not like sub-subfolders. the recursion algorithm seems to just give up after a few subfolders in and goes “nope, not going any deeper into THIS rabbit hole”.
By your folders there, I’d stop at the fstoppers, or maybe the PtW4 folder.
I have mine separated at root level on the drive, and just individually added them into the library, since you can add multiple folders.
That’s all I have on this for now, is move it up a level until it finds it, and just see if that works.
you COULD just put the BTS in the same folder as the original movie/show like:
Very interesting about PLEX not liking sub-directories/folders. What’s weird about this situation is that I have:
/Media/How-To Videos/FStoppers/PtW4/
\Folder 1\Subfolder\movie1.mp4
\Folder 2\subfolder\movie2.mp4
\Folder 3\subfolder\movie3.mp4
…
\Behind the Scenes\movie1.mp4
\Behind the Scenes\movie2.mp4
\Behind the Scenes\movie3.mp4
…
All of the movies are visible and play just fine in all of the various folders, except the /Media/How-To Videos/FStoppers/PtW4/Behind the Scenes\ folder. That just doesn’t make a bit of sense to me. I can’t even see the “Behind the Scenes” folder, let alone its contents.
Thanks for the link. So I’m very curious as to what’s going on. My folder was named, “Behind the Scenes”, and when I changed it to “BTS”, I was able to see it and the contents. But, when I look at the link, I see that it explicitly shows a folder structure with a named, “Behind the Scenes” in it.
Please help me understand the difference, as I’m missing something.
In this example, you have 15 BehindTheScenes video clips.
Using Your titles,
Movie (year)/
Movie (year).ext
01 - Mesa Arch Sunrise-behindthescenes.mp4
02 - Monument Valley-behindthescenes.mp4
03 - Thors Hammer-behindthescenes.mp4
... etc ...
You give the extra whatever name you wish it to show as. The -type appendix before the extension tells PMS what type of extra it is and where to group them in the UI for you.
The required step is to to Settings - Server - Agents and enable the Local Media Assets agents so these are detected.
But in this instance, they’re not really associated with any particular movie. They’re just random behind the scenes movies. Why would they be treated any differently? Is it because the folder name “Behind the Scenes” is a keyword of some sort for PMS?
If each behind the scenes movie was in the folder with the actually movie itself, I could see the need to add the -type, but this isn’t that situation.
Yes, the subfolder is causing the problem.
Extras need to be placed in the same folder as the movie they are associated with. This is why PMS has us create the folder for the movie. All items in it are associated with it.
If you have a subfolder named “Extras”, it will attempt to find a movie named “Extras” which, as you’ve probably seen, drives it nuts.
Which works just fine, but
/Media/How-To Videos/FStoppers/PtW4/
\Behind the Scenes\Behind the Scenes 1.mp4
\Behind the Scenes\Behind the Scenes 2.mp4
\Behind the Scenes\Behind the Scenes 3.mp4
The root cause here is because Synology stores permissions in their database.
These are lost from time to time. Synology knows this but apparently it’s not a big priority for them.
It is easy to see how their mechanism works:
SSH into the unit
Go to the share in question /volume1/sharename
Notice it has no Linux permissions assigned.
This is ok because, as root (the username which provides network services) no permission is required. It ignores them
User plex, not having this privilege, must minimally obey Linux permissions on the files. User plex could be configured to ignore all permissions but this is a dangerous position to take. It would mean user plex could access as well as delete anything. When I rewrote the installer and configuration mechanisms, It felt too dangerous to give it such power.
Therefore, if the Syno in question routinely is troubled with dropping permissions, hard setting them at the Linux level circumvents (works around) the Synology database issue.
Thanks ChuckPA. I wasn’t aware that Synology stored the permissions in a database! That makes no sense to me in the *NIX world. At least not for me in UNIX world.
I’m in the throes of updating the permissions right now.
What I do on *nix systems is leverage the native setuid and setgid bits in the filesystem.
This tells ext4 what it needs to know when creating new subdirectories and files.
Once set at the top level, and propagated down one time, it is self maintaining.
