I'll try and detail my problem as best I can. I have looked and not found a solution to this problem in the forums.
I had been using Plex for a while on my media machine running Ubuntu 12.04.4 with no problems. My files were set up properly and recognized by Plex and I was able to play them from my old phat PS3 for about a year. At some point something went wrong with my system so I moved all my Movie and TV files to my network storage drives and installed a clean copy of Ubuntu 14.4. After moving my media files back to my computer and installing Plex I find that suddenly none of my files are being seen by Plex anymore. My main folders that hold all my media are named "Movies" and "Tv". Whenever I select the dive with the said folders plex wont display those folders at all. Even if I manually input the path correct path plex wont see my folders or files.
You have the classic Linux permissions problem. Plex is just ‘another ordinary user’ just as you are. Default Linux rules prevent it from seeing any files you own unless you change that.
‘cd’ into the top level directory where your media is
Ok So I tried both of those things with no luck and as a result had to compleatly reinstall my whole system because it kept crashing(Charles Babbage must have been looking out for me that day because I had just backed up my system). If anyone has some better information like a step by step on what I need to do exactly or a video detailing what needs to be done to get Plex to see my Movie folder. This ------->https://support.plex...rmissions-Guide might as well be in an alien language because ive read it multiple times and I still dont get it. I dont care how I get plex working even if I have to reinstall linux to do it but as long as you can actualy exlplain it clearly I would apreciate the help.
When a drive is plugged in via USB, the default Linux security settings assign the USB drive exclusively to you (the logged in user) by mounting it so it is readable only by you unless there is an entry in /etc/fstab telling Linux how the drive is to be mounted. In the absence of this entry, Plex (and all others) are excluded from accessing the drive. Linux has operated this way for several years now.
This is known as a GVFS (Gnome Virtual File System) mount. Plex can't work with permissions which are this restrictive and media, which by definition of being USB, is so transient.
Your 'Data' and 'Orange' drives are USB and, unless you created the entries in /etc/fstab, won't work with Plex in their current state.
Create an entry in /etc/fstab to automount the USB drive with default permissions using the UUID= technique. Using 'UUID=' as the mount specification will permit the drive to work regardless of which slot you plug it into.
Once properly mounted via /etc/fstab, the USB drives will no longer be restricted and Plex will be able to access them.
My 3TB USB drive is formatted as NTFS and Linux gives up on permissions and anybody can read/write to it (or delete my whole library in a second; I hate that).
dick@liza:~$ mount
/dev/mapper/liza-root on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
[snip]
/dev/sdb1 on /media/u1 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096)
The fact NTFS-3G is a single-user file system is the core of the problem. It was never intended to support more than one concurrent user and, as such, does not afford the security of a Linux filesystem.
If you are able to store your media somewhere and reformat the drive to ext4, or even ext3, you will be much better off in that regard.
One option, although not a pretty one, is to give Plex ownership of the drive at mount-time (via /etc/fstab).
You will need to add / administer media by using 'root' level access (sign in as 'root' or launch a 'root' shell / file manager).
You also must take care not to enable the ability in Plex for clients to delete media. With this not enabled, your media will be as safe as it can be given the circumstances.
To facilitate this, you must make a change to the entry in /etc/fstab
@ChuckLasher said:
You have the classic Linux permissions problem. Plex is just ‘another ordinary user’ just as you are. Default Linux rules prevent it from seeing any files you own unless you change that.
‘cd’ into the top level directory where your media is
After spending countless hours trying to find a solution to this I finally figured it out. Being a noob to linux and not really understanding the steps involved in others recommendations. I simply re-installed linux (I use Linux Mint 18.x) and when it came to the name I just put “Plex” instead of my name or a random name and now it works fine. No permissions to mess with or cryptic (to me) instructions. I came to this conclusion by reading that linux doesnt share permissions between groups and it was mentioned somewhere to include plex group with the root or something like that. Well since this is a dedicated machine that I’m using just for media I just gave it a try so anyone else having this permissions issue can try my solution.
Well my ‘Plexmedia’ folder is still invisible to plex even after having 777 permission AND being owned by plex:plex
The location of this folder is /home/ejay/Plexmedia. This folder doesn’t appear in the list when I browser to add it to one of plex libraries. The folder /home/ejay just appears empty.
