This is a problem I already figured out. But I thought I’d post it here since it was a weird one, maybe it will help someone one day.
Problem: One of my media folders was showing all media as unavailable, but the path to the file was perfectly fine.
Solution (For me): Check the permissions on ALL the directories in the whole path and ensure every directory can be read/executed by the ‘plex’ user.
Details of what I found out is below.
Server Version#: 1.19.4.2935
Player Version#: Plex Web Version 4.30.2
My old CentOS install broke the other day (I tried a yum update and it had been too long).
Fortunately, all my library and database was backed up.
I wiped machine and put latest CentOS on there (7.8.2003). After getting it all up and running (including a very weird problem where the yum install failed to create plex user and I had to do it manually) and restoring the libraries and the database, it was finally all up.
Except in one of my library locations, all the media wouldn’t play, and PLEX said it was unavailable. I actually copied and pasted the exact file path from the “Get Info” page AND the “XML” into my terminal and tested that the path resolved. And it did. I was pretty stumped.
I checked many of the topics here and in other places on the web, and there were a number of solutions, none of which worked for me. Then I thought that maybe there was a permissions issue. So I checked the permissions of the library - they were all good, readable to all users.
So I tried to “re-add” the location to the library from the PLEX Web UI, editing the library. As I navigated into one of the folders below the library, it was blank. I couldn’t navigate any further.
I realized that one of the folders had no read or execute permissions for group or all, and belonged to another user. Apparently this broke PLEX even though the plex user could ‘cd’ into the actual library directory just fine!
After this, everything started working:
chmod a+r /home/danielg
chmod a+x /home/danielg
Then I navigated to the files and when I clicked on the “unavailable” banner it disappeared, and I could play the files. So - if you are getting this error - check the permissions of ALL folders in the entire path, and ensure they all have read and execute permission for user plex.
A little more on the story:
I know it is weird to have a library in another Linux user’s directory. But it’s a story of evolution.
When I first created my original plex server 3 years ago, I put my library in my user directory on the Linux machine: /home/danielg/plex/movies, /home/danielg/plex/television, etc.
After filling that up with 50Gigs of stuff, and finding my family loved plex and having their own stuff accessible all over the house, I decided to expand and bought external USB drives (one for library, and one as a backup). Now the library is 750GB and growing. However, I never did move that 50GB. I backed it up, but never moved it to the external drives. So my library is split across those two locations. I have been slowly moving it all to the external drives, but wasn’t done when my server crashed and I had to build a new one.
The latest CentOS is more security-minded so it makes all new user directories unreadable to group and all, even such that other users can’t even ‘cd’ into them.
