This used to be a great Media Server, why did it get F**K up?

I have been trying for 6 day to get it to run correctly on a Linux based system with a 2nd Hard Drive that stores my media. This stupid “PLEX” user crap is stupid and messed everything up. I don’t understand why writers seem to think they need to break something that isn’t broken. Fix it back to how it work before… Or make it work correctly. Why should i have to add a “PLEX” user permissions to my 2nd Hard Driver Folder? It’s running under a “ADMIN” account in MINT. It should already be listed under the group “USERNAME”, since it was install using that “USERNAME”. This Software is useless if it doesn’t work. D***A.

On Linux, Plex has always run as user plex in group plex unless you manually override this. It installs as a service, in an unprivileged account.

I guess you want it to run under a different username? If so, I can help with that.

Are there any other customizations you want?

Well if thats the case, why so hard to get it to read/select Media/Movies folder on the second hard drive? The USERNAME have rights to those folder. So PLEX should too. I have also gone as far as add PLEX to USERNAME group.

And its not a Flavor of Linux issue. I have tried Debian 9, Ubuntu 14.4 and 18 and now MINT. All have problems seeing the folders. The drive has been partition several times under ROOT and USERNAME. So not really thinking its a LINUX problem.

It’s not a Linux problem. It’s a Linux administration problem.
How long have you been using Linux?

3 Likes

Really going there…

8 years…

Mostly Ubuntu 14.4…

I asked because I need to know at which level I should respond. Do I respond to you as a beginner, an intermediate or advanced skilled user.

With that out of the way,

Where is the media ? What’s the pathname? Give me one parent/TLD please

/mnt/Media

Currently using MINT. User name is lurch
lurch has full read and write to folders
i also added PLEX to lurch group

And have no problem browsing to folders in SABnzbd and Radarr. I also set up SAMBA and have them shared as guest.

Adding user plex to the lurch group won’t cut it.

Assuming lurch:lurch owns everything under /mnt/Media,
and /mnt/Media was mounted in /etc/fstab, <-- If automounted / Gnome mounted, this is the root cause

What does ls -la /mnt/Media look like?

Correction
This time I have it mounted media/lurch/Media

and they are all lurch:lurch

IMG_8073

You did not mount under /mnt as you had stated. You are showing me it automounted under /media.

With Gnome and Nautilus (the file manager & automounter)

All partitions mounted under “/media” EXCLUSIVE access only to the currently signed on username

User plex was prohibited the moment the filesystem was mounted.

Your next step is to add the entry in /etc/fstab to mount the media **some place other.

Making a new mount point somewhere else, or mounting it under /mnt as you originally stated, will resolve the access permissions.

Add i have tried modifying the PLEXMEDIASERVER config file. Changed PLEX to lurch and relaunched service. When i did that it need to rebuild the Daemon. Perform that and it crashes the PLEXMEDIASERVER. Thats why I am aggravated. TOO TOO much work to make it work. In the past I would have PLEX running in 5MINS.

It was mounted under /mnt/Media when I was trying Debian 9 and that didn’t work… It just mount now under Media. But here lets entertain ya. I will go mount it in fstab again.

Gnome changed… That’s aggravation 1.
Init was removed and replaced with systemd - That’s aggravation 2.

I totally understand where you are with this:

Rather than point you to how “How to customize your Plex configuration” Linux Tips I wrote for exactly these cases:

  1. Stop Plex
  2. sudo edit plexmediaserver
  3. Create the following lines (it will call up whichever editor you have selected)
[Service]
User=lurch
Group=lurch
  1. Save and exit the editor
  2. sudo systemctl daemon-reload
  3. sudo chown -R lurch:lurch /var/lib/plexmediaserver
  4. Start PMS
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So why isn’t that already in the configuration file???