Not Scanning New Directory after Moving Server

[wizzardss]

Server: Ubuntu (Snap)
Server Version#: 1.19.5.3112

I have followed this guide to move my Plex server installation from Synology to Ubuntu (Snap). I got as far as “Scan the Library”, where the new server should examine the contents of the new location and associate the content with the existing media items in your library.

Looking at the logs (sample below), Plex finds the new folder, then it correctly loops through each of the directories within that folder, but looks for the old file path instead of the new one. Then, it checks the old folder and correctly identifies that it isn’t available.

Is this a bug?

Aug 15, 2020 20:46:13.184 [0x7f377cd58700] DEBUG - * Scanning /media/edward/Media/shorts
Aug 15, 2020 20:46:13.184 [0x7f377cd58700] DEBUG - Scanner: Processing directory /media/edward/Media/shorts (parent: no)
…
Aug 15, 2020 20:46:13.186 [0x7f377cd58700] DEBUG - Scanner: Processing directory /media/edward/Media/shorts/Partly Cloudy (2009) (parent: yes)
Aug 15, 2020 20:46:13.186 [0x7f377cd58700] DEBUG - File ‘/volume1/shorts/Partly Cloudy (2009)/Partly Cloudy (2009).mkv’ didn’t exist, can’t skip.
Aug 15, 2020 20:46:13.186 [0x7f377cd58700] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity 0d28a459-6dd3-4e72-9646-04f5c0d556f1 - completed 4.0% - Scanning Shorts
Aug 15, 2020 20:46:13.186 [0x7f377cd58700] DEBUG - Scanner: Processing directory /media/edward/Media/shorts/Bao (2018) (parent: yes)
Aug 15, 2020 20:46:13.186 [0x7f377cd58700] DEBUG - File ‘/volume1/shorts/Bao (2018)/Bao (2018).mkv’ didn’t exist, can’t skip.
Aug 15, 2020 20:46:13.187 [0x7f377cd58700] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity 0d28a459-6dd3-4e72-9646-04f5c0d556f1 - completed 5.9% - Scanning Shorts
…
Aug 15, 2020 20:46:13.194 [0x7f377cd58700] DEBUG - * Scanning /volume1/shorts
Aug 15, 2020 20:46:13.194 [0x7f377cd58700] DEBUG - * Marking media not available in /volume1/shorts
Aug 15, 2020 20:46:13.198 [0x7f377cd58700] DEBUG - * Taking 25 items out of the map (which has 25 items) for being unavailable.
Aug 15, 2020 20:46:13.208 [0x7f377cd58700] DEBUG - * Taking 25 directories out of the map (which has 0 dirs) for being unavailable.

[pshanew]

I’d recommend against using the Snap package (the Plex Media Server Linux package maintainer does as well). There have been some issues reported where Plex Media Server is unable to scan outside its sandbox in a Snap configuration.

There’s a native package for Debian/Ubuntu which is very simple to install:
dpkg -i plexmediaserver_version.deb

As part of the installation process, an APT repository is configured; it only needs to be enabled to allow updating from apt update && apt upgrade. Note that only the non-Plex Pass versions are available in the repository; I’m pretty sure that applies to the Snap version as well. If you want to keep up-to-date with Plex Pass versions, you’ll need to download and manually install from the website when available.

Another potential issue is where your drive is mounted. By default, auto-mounts (I’m making an assumption that’s what this is) are visible only to the logged in user (“edward” in this case). That path, /media/edward, will have ACLs associated with it that prevent other users from (plex in this case) from being able to read it. Without seeing your full logging, it’s hard to see whether or not that is the case here. Regardless, it’s generally recommended to create a static mount for the drive somewhere in your file system; /mnt is generally a good place. This guide describes in detail the recommended method of mounting drives and setting permissions for use with PMS:

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 …

If you continue to have issues, please provide complete logs (Debug enabled, Verbose disabled); you can download them from Settings → Troubleshooting → Download Logs.

[wizzardss]

I haven’t used Ubuntu for a few versions, so while my first instinct was to go to the Plex website and download the latest .deb version, it refused to install through a double-click to package manager so I assumed that Ubuntu had changed beyond using .deb installers.

I’ve installed the .deb using dpkg now, and pulled over the new metadata.

You were correct that the next issue was around permissions (which I had expected from the snap package, to be honest, but as it didn’t create the user plex, there was no issue there). I’ve re-mounted the raid controller to /mnt/media and updated ownership and permissions to be friendly with Plex. It pulled in all the data correctly now.

Thanks for the link about re-mounting to that location automatically on start-up… looks like that’s my next challenge!

If anyone else has this issue – don’t use Snap. dpkg the deb from the Plex website instead.

[pshanew]

No problem, glad you got it working.