Why can't I use the media scanner from the command line?

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

I want to use the Plex Media Scanner from the command line but it won’t show me anything about my library:

trolley@mediaserver:~$ /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex\ Media\ Scanner --list
trolley@mediaserver:~$

I have modifed the startup scripts so the server is running as my user, so I know that’s not the problem (I found that solution already):

trolley@mediaserver:~$ ps aux | grep "Plex Media Server"
trolley   1250  0.0  0.0   4496   716 ?        Ss   19:16   0:00 /bin/sh -c LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/plexmediaserver "/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server"
trolley   1257  0.1  2.3 444276 93064 ?        Sl   19:16   0:01 /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server

Is there something else I’m missing?

2

It’s username sensitive. It must be run as user plex

3

OK, thanks. It turns out changing which user PMS ran as wasn’t as simple as I thought since my changes got clobbered by a server upgrade.

I’ll have to figure out how to run my scripts as the plex user instead.

Why is there an option in /etc/defaults/plexmediaserver to change it then (which didn’t work on Ubuntu anyway)?

4

Since Ubuntu 16.04, when systemd was implemented, /etc/defaults was obsoleted. It is provided in the package now for backward compatibility with Ubuntu 14 and 15 plus other init based systems.

I have a Linux Tip which shows you how to customize your Plex installation which will endure server upgrades.

5

replace

/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex\ Media\ Scanner --scan

with

su plex -c “/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex\ Media\ Scanner --scan”

2 Likes