Hello all, I’ve been reading this community from the outside for some time, and I finally decided to dip my toe into Linux a bit. I have an old PC I was using to run Plex through a Windows install, but this is now a Linux Mint Cinnamon machine.

I have Plex Media Server installed and running, however I am having a hell of a time getting it to see my external drive where my media is located.

Trying a bunch of research, it seems like it is a permissions issue that I cannot seem to shake. Plex is able to see the drive, though nothing in it. I’ve googled as much as I can, but none of the suggestions seem to help me. I’ve tried to run the command chown, though I get an operation not successful error in return.

ls -la never shows the plex user or group listed, and I’ve tried for about 2 hours trying various things and have had no success.

Additionally, the other two drives I have connected are stuck in read only as well.

Anything I may have overlooked?

  • Maxy@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    7·
    5 months ago

    To change the ownership of the files, you should only have to run sudo chown -R user:group directory. -R makes chown run recursively, so it will modify the directory and all subdirectories and files. Do note that changing the ownership to plex:plex or something similar would leave your user unable to normally modify the files. My solution to this was to add both my regular user and the plex (in my case jellyfin) user to the same group. That way both users can easily see and modify the files, as long as the group has read/write permissions (the 2nd column of rwx in ls -Al). If necessary, you can add group permissions with sudo chmod -R g+rw directory.

    On a side note: have you considered using jellyfin? It’s a completely free alternative to plex, which recently received a truly massive update with tons of new features. Some people prefer plex’ overall experience, but I’ve been running jellyfin with almost no complaints.

    Small disclaimer: I’m writing from mobile, so the commands might not be 100% correct. Run at your own risk, and NEVER POINT A CHMOD/CHOWN COMMAND AT SYSTEM DIRECTORIES LIKE / OR /USR. That’s one of the easiest ways to completely break your system.

    • korny@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      I like this guide! However, I keep running into an Operation not permitted error when attempting to change the ownership to the plex.plex group. I’ve run into this a few times and cannot seem to get around it.

      EDIT: Got it working, though still running into an operation not permitted error. Though, I unmounted and remounted the drives changing the uid to a new mount point. Plex is able to see the files now!

      Now to start messing with docker…

      EDIT 2: Short lived, changes revert after reboot and have to remount again with changes.

  • ClemaX
    2·
    5 months ago

    Mount the drive with the user or group as plex. See mount options uid and gid. You can also set precise permissions on the mount point (using options at mount time) to let plex access a subdirectory.

  • catloafEnglish
    1·
    5 months ago

    If you’re starting out, just go right for Jellyfin. Plex keeps getting harder to manage over time. And run it in Docker if you can, it makes it much easier to manage when it doesn’t scatter files across your filesystem.

    But I wouldn’t recommend using external drives for storage, due to the unreliability of the connection, and the weirdness in protocol translation between USB and ATA.

    I would still check your mount options though.

    • fpslem@lemmy.world
      2·
      5 months ago

      I still haven’t had luck getting Jellyfin to run on my LMDE box, but I have to generally agree that I like Jellyfin much more than Plex right now. Plex gets worse with each update, making it harder to do the basic thing I got Plex for in the first place.

    • korny@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      I am very interested in Docker, but was more or less trying to get it working for now while I learn more about Docker. I have a lifetime purchase for plex, so I’ll probably stay with this for the time being unless I really feel the need pulling me.