I am no longer able to access server settings on my ubuntu 18.04.2 machine. The problem persists for a couple of weeks now while having upgraded to a couple of minor versions in the hope the problem would just go away. I am now on plexmediaserver_1.15.4.919 .
I do have plex pass and have a bunch of internal users as well.
I have tried a couple of solutions found googling but none work.
I would really hate to have to purge the whole install and clean install as I loose my watch lists.
My plexmediaserver runs as a local linux user in order for it to access the media folders. I made sure that /usr/lib/plexmediaserver and /var/lib/plexmediaserver and subfolders + files are owned by the same user.
I did an experiment where I configured root as the user that runs plexmediaserver and I was able to access the server settings. However, I do not wish to leave the server running as root.
This might suggest that there’s a permissions issue somewhere causing this - so, what other file locations should I make accessible to the user running plex?
/etc/default/plexmediaserver has
export PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_USER=radu
/etc/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service.d/override.conf has
[Service]
User=radu
Group=radu
radu@media:/etc$ ps -ef | grep plex
…
radu 10514 10503 0 16:54 ? 00:00:08 /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server
…
radu@media:/var/lib/plexmediaserver$ tree -u | grep -v radu
.
Your install is out of compliance with the new install guidelines. No more /etc/default/plexmediaserver or having Plex files in /usr/lib/plexmediaserver. Couple ways of cleaning this up, refer to “Customizing” in the following How To:
Relatively easy if:
Server began life before/at Ubuntu 16.04 release
Tried the snap/docker or some other script install
Was migrated from another server
Install is modified from default, user/directory
The main thing is the installation is being unified across distributions.
Yeah - it’s not this. As I already had the changes in /etc/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service.d/override.conf which actually work as I can see the process being run as my user.
Also - as I can see in the package own’s plexmediaserver.service file, /usr/lib/plexmediaserver is still used as storage for PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_HOME
My apologies, I was looking at a fresh install in Docker and didn’t look inside. The executables are in /usr/lib/plexmediaserver and all the user data is in /var/lib/plexmediaserver unless relocated.
Yeah - that’s what I have, and all files in the two folders are owned by the user running plex. However - I still can’t access server settings.
…as soon as I run plex as root, server settings become available. So it’s definitely an issue with file permissions. But I don’t know which other files I need to make available to the user running plex…
When running as user ‘radu’, ‘sudo service plexmediaserver status’ was complaining at the end:
Apr 18 16:40:10 media sh[6099]: Traceback (most recent call last):
Apr 18 16:40:10 media sh[6099]: File “/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Resources/Plug-ins-8e2884e4b/Framework.bundle/Contents/Resources/Versions/2/Python/bootstrap.py”, line 91, in
Apr 18 16:40:10 media sh[6099]: import Framework
Apr 18 16:40:10 media sh[6099]: File “/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Resources/Plug-ins-8e2884e4b/Framework.bundle/Contents/Resources/Versions/2/Python/Framework/init.py”, line 26, in
Apr 18 16:40:10 media sh[6099]: import components
Apr 18 16:40:10 media sh[6099]: File “/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Resources/Plug-ins-8e2884e4b/Framework.bundle/Contents/Resources/Versions/2/Python/Framework/components/init.py”, line 9, in
Apr 18 16:40:10 media sh[6099]: from data import Data
Apr 18 16:40:10 media sh[6099]: File “/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Resources/Plug-ins-8e2884e4b/Framework.bundle/Contents/Resources/Versions/2/Python/Framework/components/data.py”, line 8, in
Apr 18 16:40:10 media sh[6099]: from lxml import etree, html, objectify
Apr 18 16:40:10 media sh[6099]: ImportError: /home/radu/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/lxml/etree.so: undefined symbol: PyUnicodeUCS4_DecodeLatin1
In spite of this error, plex was running just fine transcoding and showing up the main UI. Only the metadata updater and settings were unavailable (maybe others that I did not need). That is why I did not pay attention to this error.
I simply moved my ~/.local/lib/python2.7 to some temp folder, and restarted plex. All works fine now.
Next - the simple task of figuring out who placed that python lib in there. What else I broke by this move.
…I need to spend some time to install this in some isolated container like docker or smth. This lib thing is annoying.
Not in front of my computer right now but I thought all the files in /usr/lib/plexmediaserver were owned by root not the user. Might want to backup the /var/lib/plexmediaserver portion and purge and reinstall.
