Plex DVR recording permissions

General Discussions Plex Features
1

Hey all, hopefully my situation isn’t too weird. I have plex setup on ubuntu 16.04 server. All of my data is hosted on a windows file server exposed via SMB. So in ubuntu, I have the windows shares mounted via cifs in /etc/fstab as follows for my videos:

//10.2.11.16/data/videos /media/videos cifs rw,_netdev,credentials=/etc/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8,uid=1000,gid=1000,noperm,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777,vers=3.0,sec=ntlmsspi 0 0

I have verified that the share is mounted properly and I can write a random file onto the share as any user. I have setup dvr with a HDHomeRun Connect. I have verified that the homerun is working fine as I can watch tv shows via the windows and android apps.

My problem is when plex tries to write files for a scheduled recording. It fails giving “An unknown error occurred” yellow exclamation. The errors I’m seeing from the media server log are below. I feel like the problem is in the permissions or actions allowed via the cifs mount that plex is trying to use, but can’t. I’ve tried googling around for cifs errors relating to determining disk space or such things, but I’ve come up empty. For what it’s worth, plex does write some folders successfully, but the folders are all empty:
folders

Any help would be appreciated!

Jul 20, 2017 22:51:55.295 [0x7fa671ffe700] ERROR - Failed to calculate available disk space for path ‘/media/videos/Recorded TV Shows/.grab’: 1 (Operation not permitted)
Jul 20, 2017 22:51:55.830 [0x7fa671ffe700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jul 20, 2017 22:51:55.831 [0x7fa671ffe700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:01.072 [0x7fa6727ff700] ERROR - [Transcoder] http://10.2.4.150:5004/auto/v39.2: Server returned 5XX Server Error reply
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:01.075 [0x7fa67bffe700] ERROR - JobManager: child process returned: 1 (Operation not permitted)
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:01.076 [0x7fa671ffe700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:01.076 [0x7fa671ffe700] ERROR - MDE: video has neither a video stream nor an audio stream
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:01.076 [0x7fa671ffe700] ERROR - MDE: no compatible media decisions are available
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:01.076 [0x7fa671ffe700] ERROR - DVR:Recorder: Unable to compute media decision.
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:01.076 [0x7fa671ffe700] ERROR - DVR:Recorder: Error 14 starting the record, shutting things down.
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:01.076 [0x7fa671ffe700] ERROR - DVR:Grabber: Starting media grab failed.
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:24.248 [0x7fa6797fd700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:24.248 [0x7fa6797fd700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:24.726 [0x7fa68d3ff700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:24.726 [0x7fa68d3ff700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:29.376 [0x7fa66d7f8700] ERROR - [Transcoder] http://10.2.4.150:5004/auto/v39.2: Server returned 5XX Server Error reply
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:29.377 [0x7fa67bffe700] ERROR - JobManager: child process returned: 1 (Operation not permitted)
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:29.377 [0x7fa6797fd700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:29.377 [0x7fa6797fd700] ERROR - MDE: video has neither a video stream nor an audio stream
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:29.377 [0x7fa6797fd700] ERROR - MDE: no compatible media decisions are available
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:29.377 [0x7fa6797fd700] ERROR - DVR:Recorder: Unable to compute media decision.
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:29.377 [0x7fa6797fd700] ERROR - DVR:Recorder: Error 14 starting the record, shutting things down.
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:29.378 [0x7fa6797fd700] ERROR - DVR:Grabber: Starting media grab failed.
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:29.856 [0x7fa68b3fd700] ERROR - [Transcoder] http://10.2.4.150:5004/auto/v39.1: Server returned 5XX Server Error reply
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:29.857 [0x7fa67bffe700] ERROR - JobManager: child process returned: 1 (Operation not permitted)
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:29.857 [0x7fa68d3ff700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:29.857 [0x7fa68d3ff700] ERROR - MDE: video has neither a video stream nor an audio stream
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:29.857 [0x7fa68d3ff700] ERROR - MDE: no compatible media decisions are available
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:29.857 [0x7fa68d3ff700] ERROR - DVR:Recorder: Unable to compute media decision.
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:29.857 [0x7fa68d3ff700] ERROR - DVR:Recorder: Error 14 starting the record, shutting things down.
Jul 20, 2017 22:52:29.858 [0x7fa68d3ff700] ERROR - DVR:Grabber: Starting media grab failed.

2

I think your userid in fstab is wrong. 1000 would be your main linux user but you want to use the
plex user
In command line you can try doing:
sudo chown -R plex:users /media/videos and see if forcing an recursive ownership change to plex for that mount helps
I dont recall needing that big of a fstab entry years ago to do this. If the server is sending ownership information, you may need to add the forceuid and forcegid options

3

Yeah, this may be another beta issue. I was messing around with this last night and finally posted this question after coming up with nothing. I setup plex to record a bunch of random shows just to give it stuff to do and more things to test with and it succeeded in recording an episode of American Dad in the middle of the night. I hadn’t changed anything since posting this question :neutral:

The resulting mkv was ~1.2GB for the half-hour show, but the file reports that it’s ~25hrs in length for some reason.

And totally agree, I’m no ubuntu expert. I put my fstab together from whatever google hit got me up and running. From my understanding, the “noperm” flag should open the share up so any user has open access. I made your suggested changes and swapped the owner to the plex user and rebooted. I got it to start recording an episode in progress, but a second show I attempted failed.

Jul 21, 2017 11:25:48.349 [0x7fa66c7fb700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jul 21, 2017 11:25:48.350 [0x7fa66c7fb700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jul 21, 2017 11:25:53.485 [0x7fa65fffa700] ERROR - [Transcoder] http://10.2.4.150:5004/auto/v15.4: Server returned 5XX Server Error reply
Jul 21, 2017 11:25:53.486 [0x7fa67bffe700] ERROR - JobManager: child process returned: 1 (Operation not permitted)
Jul 21, 2017 11:25:53.486 [0x7fa66c7fb700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
Jul 21, 2017 11:25:53.486 [0x7fa66c7fb700] ERROR - MDE: video has neither a video stream nor an audio stream
Jul 21, 2017 11:25:53.486 [0x7fa66c7fb700] ERROR - MDE: no compatible media decisions are available
Jul 21, 2017 11:25:53.486 [0x7fa66c7fb700] ERROR - DVR:Recorder: Unable to compute media decision.
Jul 21, 2017 11:25:53.486 [0x7fa66c7fb700] ERROR - DVR:Recorder: Error 14 starting the record, shutting things down.
Jul 21, 2017 11:25:53.486 [0x7fa66c7fb700] ERROR - DVR:Grabber: Starting media grab failed.

I’m also seeing the issue others have reported where a show doesn’t complete and sits at 100% indefinitely.

So yeah, still very much beta :smile: Thanks for the help!

4

@whyhaveausername

In case you require logs to be looked into please enable debug logging on the server and restart the server - so that all logs from launch would have debug logging

See https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201643703-Reporting-issues-with-Plex-Media-Server