Using network shares

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

I’ve been following this useful guide to try add some shares from my NAS, but I’m falling at the point I attempt to mount.

I’m getting an error back unknown file system type ‘smbfs’

Guides online are suggesting that samba needs to be installed (it is) or that I should try to use cifs instead. Which I’ve sorta tried, but didn’t have a clue what I was doing. |

I’m at a very noob level with linux (and plex come to that). So not entirely understanding some of what I’m doing.

It looks like I need to mount the smb share from my nas. I’ve tried doing it via GUI, but that still isn’t recognised within the plex server.

Answers using words of one syllable will be appreciated

2

mount type cifs

3

Bingo!

4

So I’m not sure what happened with this, but all of a sudden the mounts i created weren’t there any more. So this is just to expand on what I did to get it working again. (I think the issue was that I’d mounted using the GUI into the network section, then mounted from that).

This is for an SMB file share on my network.

I edited /etc/fstab

sudo nano /etc/fstab

As it’s an SMB it looks like I needed to give the IP address rather that using smb://

so the line I added that looked like this:

//192.168.0.99/share/ /mnt/networkmount cifs username=username,password=password 0 0

then I ran

sudo mount -a

And that seemed to do it. Hopefully it will last this time.

5

If it still gives you some headache… ChuckPA has a nice detailed instruction on how to set it up in the Tips & Tricks section:

also… make sure to mount the drive for the local plex user…

6

If I may add?

  1. Use NFS if available. It’s the Linux-native protocol, much faster than SMB on Linux, far less restrictive (uid/gid) and MUCH easier.
  2. There mount options missing. If I may share mine?
[chuck@lizum ~.237]$ grep movies /etc/fstab
# dvr-movies
# movies
vienna:/movies    /vie/movies     nfs sec=sys,intr,rw,vers=4,timeo=15,auto,async,nofail,bg 0 0
vienna:/movies2   /vie/movies2    nfs sec=sys,intr,rw,vers=4,timeo=15,auto,async,nofail,bg 0 0

vienna is my NAS (IP 192.168.0.21)

EDIT: Ubuntu/Debian users will likely need apt install nfs-common

7

So if I’ve got NFS enabled on my NAS (which apparently I do), I can just switch out cifs for nfs in etc/fstab and then run mount -a again and it’ll be using nfs?

8

correct… considering the respective mount parameters (e.g. as shows in ChuckPA’s example – there’s also a detailed description in the tips & tricks section linked above)

9

Absolutely.

  1. Stop Plex.
  2. Make the changes to /etc/fstab
  3. Test the mount with sudo mount -a
  4. Check the permissions after mounting ( ls -la )
  5. Make any corrections and recheck (2-4)
  6. Start Plex

I try to write Tips & Tricks / How To’s to be both problem solving and educational. When done, I hope you understand why it’s done that way. It saves trouble next time because you already have a good idea and better understanding

10

That’s perfect for me, really apprecaite it. Especially as I’m learning plex and linux at the same time!

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