Ah, you just shared the important piece of information; you’re remote.
You need to be “local” even though remote. The answer here is SSH tunnel.
ssh -L 8888:127.0.0.1:32400 ip.addr.of.host
Neat ssh-trick, saving that one for other occations 
Although I was already on a VPN to my local network, but this solved the problem with localhost.
Didn’t help though. I removed the entire Library folder and let Plex create a fresh one. Going to localhost:8888/web, I get into setup, and then it’s displaying “Waiting for Plex media server to start”, then after quite a while returning “Error, supply logs, etc…”. I can continue creating the server, but no settings are accessable.
I’ve attached the log file here, and it seems to not be able to start any agents or reading any configuration files. It also complained of not having access to the Plug-in directory in “Application Support”.
Again, I’ve quadruple checked file permissions and ownership in all folders contained within environmental variables in /etc/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.local + the one in override.conf.
My only success (as described above) have been to chown everything to plex:plex and run the server with that user. Did anything particular change between 1.13 and 1.18 versions in regards of how it handles file permissions? Since 1.13 has worked without problem.
Plex Media Server.log (359.8 KB)
It looks like, when you transferred from /var/lib/plexmediaserver to /home/plexdir, that some of it didn’t make it. Plug-ins should always exist, even if empty. This makes me wonder what else didn’t make it?
Did you use tar ?
Dec 01, 2019 23:49:56.458 [0x7f61b7bdd700] WARN - Warning: ex: boost::filesystem::last_write_time: No such file or directory: "/home/plexdir/tmp/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins", couldn't check file: "/home/plexdir/tmp/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins"
@ChuckPa The last log was not a transfer, it was an empty folder, just to test if a clean Library-folder would solve the server issue.
I manually created the Plug-Ins-folder on the second startup, and that didn’t change anything.
That is still not the core issue: the core issue is that despite NOT moving the Library-folder, and not changing any permission, Plex (after update from 1.13 to 1.18) is unable to retrieve any server settings.
If you can’t access the server settings:
The fundamental problem is:
The problem is not that I can’t access the server. The problem is that I can’t access or change ANY SETTINGS at all. All media is accessable. “Updating Library” works, but Plex can’t scarpe any new metadata.
Transcoding works fine as well (except with some media that suddenly has stopped working, but I think that is something else, since it’s worked fine after the update as well).
EDIT: As I mentioned above (don’t know if this helps at all regarding this problem): I tried re-installing the server, removing everything. BUT, The Plex installation can’t even finish if I haven’t on beforehand created a correctly permissioned plex folder in /var/lib. The post-installation script fails.
EDIT 2: As it turns out, moving the Plex dir from /var/lib/plexmediaserver to /home/plexdir was the thing that screwed up the transcoder crashing. Moving it back fixed the issue. Again: even though permissions are correct.
EDIT 3: IF in fact, the problem accessing server settings is related to my plex account. Can you walk me through the process of
Ok, so now I’ve confirmed that it is not an account problem. What I did was:
Settings are now accessible. Browsing the library is accessible. But no content is accessible due to the /media/user/mount-issue that Ubuntu has.
During this entire troubleshooting process, I have tried the following:
The conclusion is: this MUST be a bug. There’s simply nothing wrong with the permissions, I’ve followed all the guides that you’ve supplied (and that I’ve found in the knowledge database) to the letter.
Ok, so somehow, in the process of moving things around, /var/lib/plexmediaserver didn’t get all permissions re-assigned properly. Your manual ownership force put it as it should be again.
As for /usr/lib/plexmediaserver, please put them back to root.
They belong to the package manager which is run as root.
Ok, so somehow, in the process of moving things around, /var/lib/plexmediaserver didn’t get all permissions re-assigned properly. Your manual ownership force put it as it should be again.
No, that is not the problem. The problem is that Plex on my server has ALWAYS run as snattack:snattack, and that Plex after update, could not run as this user anymore even with correct permissions/location of the Library folder. This setup has worked flawlessly until I updated to 1.18.
Plex, not to be able to run as other user/group than plex:plex (in this case snattack:snattack) is the issue here, the issue is not that it worked with plex:plex after forcing permissions. This is not a solution to the issue, it’s a workaround.
I mentioned that in a previous post that this worked, and I’ve simply given up now and re-created the Library (following your guide of “Moving Library” that worked fine) with plex:plex as user instead of snattack:snattack. But it’s still a bug you should report since nothing changed other than the update not working.
I will set /usr/lib/plexmediaserver back.
EDIT: And thanks for all support of course!
Did you modify /lib/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service
or did you have the correct override in /etc/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service.d ?
/lib/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service is under control of the package manager and subject to overwrite at any time.
Systemd overrides are fully supported and not touched by updates
Did you modify
/lib/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service
or did you have the correct override in/etc/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service.d?
/lib/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.serviceis under control of the package manager and subject to overwrite at any time.Systemd overrides are fully supported and not touched by updates
I used an correct override.conf in /etc/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service.d. I tried several variation:
plexmediaserver.service to override.conf.In both cases, I could verify that override.conf was used by:
ps.ps also displayed the PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_APPLICATION_SUPPORT_DIR according to changes I did in override.conf.Despite this:
But:
If you set the override as it should have been set then there would have been no problems. Somehow a step was skipped or did not complete. It does happen, no big deal.
Either way, you’ve got it back to norm.
Now you can put it back the way you want it.
It’s a fairly comfortable viewpoint to blame the user instead of investigating this. To me it’s a “big deal”: I’ve been researching this for two weeks, just ending up on the endpoint there’s a bug in the software, that is now ignored by the software company behind the software, blaming on a misstake that simply does not exist.
I have reproduced this at least 10 times, and I can reproduce it again within 5 minutes from now if you want me to. I also myself work in game development, so I’m fairly good at structuring a QA case, and as you probably know: if it’s reproduceable, it’s a bug. Even if it’s system specific.
The fact is the following:
It worked for two years.
1.18 update broke it right away.
It could not be fixed, still not fixed, just worked around.
I did not set the override wrong, period. I’ve even verified that it worked (as you can read above). If the override were wrong, Plex would be unable to access everything. But currently it can read media library and transcoder.
Even the actual install repo did not work properly.
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