I am running Plex on Ubuntu 15.10 in VirtualBox on Windows. I created a second virtual disk and attached it to the VM. There is no problem with it in Ubuntu as I can create folders and files. However Plex cannot see any folders or files when adding to library. It can see the drive but nothing else.
I tried changing permissions and ownership to no avail the method here: How to make folders ' seen' by PLEX did not work.
Please help me
These are the steps that I used to get Plex to work on my machine. Hope this helps some people.
In my case, I'm going to add a drive to my system. In the disks application, I'm going to format the drive using the ntfs file system. **This may be incorrect. I'll create a partition using ext4 I think and try that. NTFS permissions in Ubuntu can be tricky, but the following /etc/fstab entry works - setting user and group to plex
Once formatted, I'm going to set the Drive and Icon names to "PlexMedia" and set the mount point to: /media/Whatever/PlexMedia
In /etc/fstab define the user:group ownership using the following fstab entry for the mount point of the drive
Verify the OS assigned user ID number of the plex user by: id plex uid=999(plex) gid=999(plex) groups=999(plex),44(video),110(render),1000(yourusergroup) ** I'm not sure that plex needs to be a member of (your user) group, but I did it that way.
Once you've verified the uid and gid 999 of the plex user or plex:plex --- sudo gedit /etc/fstab
x-gvfs-show,x-gvfs-name=PlexMedia,x-gvfs-icon=PlexMedia 0 0
The underlined is what I added. The rest was created
by the disks application once defined by me. When the drive is
mounted, the fstab entry forces the OS to assign the owner and group
as the user:group 999:999 which is the plex user and plex group.
Once mounted, the plex user will be owner and any user in the
plex group will have rights to the directory (drive) as defined
by me later in this process.
use the "groups" command to list all available groups
groups yourusername adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin lxd sambashare plex ---- Make sure that the "plex" group is present in the list
user yourusername needs to be a member of the plex group
sudo usermod -a -G (group name) (username to be added to the group)
Always use the -a (append) option when adding a user to a
new group. If you omit the -a option, the user will be
removed from the groups not listed after the -G option.
so... sudo usermod -a -G plex yourusername
Verify that the user "yourusername" is now a member of the group "plex"
groups yourusername yourusername : yourusername adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin lxd sambashare plex ----
Add recursively to all (Owner, Group, Other Users) the execute data bit
sudo chmod a+rx /media sudo chmod a+rx /media/whatever sudo chmod a+rx /media/whatever/PlexTest I'm not certain why we did this to /media or to /media/yourusername. I probably didn't need to add the execute bit to the entirety of each directory and sub-directory. Probably just adding it to the /media/whatever/PlexTest directory (drive) would have been sufficient.
Read 4 4 4 4 Write 2 2 0 0 Execute 1 0 1 0 --- --- --- --- 7 6 5 4 | | | | | | | +-- Read Only | | +-- Read and Execute, But Not Write | +-- Read and Write, But Not Execute +-- Read, Write, and Execute - full access
So... to allow Owner, Group, and all others read, write, and execute chmod 777 (file or directory name)
ufw - Uncomplicated Firewalls
sudo apt install ufw
sudo ufw status - shows status of firewall
Status: inactive
sudo ufw enable - enables ufw
sudo ufw status Status: active
To Action From
Samba ALLOW Anywhere
22/tcp ALLOW Anywhere
Samba (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)
22/tcp (v6) ALLOW Anywhere (v6)
sudo ufw allow from 192.168.1.0/24 - Allows inbound from local network sudo ufw allow from 192.168.1.0/24 to any port 32400 - this is the plex rule that you need to add ** I'm not sure that the "to any port 32400" rule needs to be added since I've allowed all local inbound access, but it would be needed if the all inbound traffic rule didn't exist.
Install gufw sudo apt install gufw (or, if needed, apt-get install gufw)
** See Understanding ufw - Uncomplicated firewall.txt for more information
Try this: Plex Media Manager sees external NTFS drive but doesn't see directories
Add Plex user to the plugdev group by entering
sudo gpasswd -a plex plugdev
right-click your external drive in the directory browser and go to properties to get its location
in the terminal enter
sudo chmod 775 external drive location; ie media/computername
right-click your Plex media folder on your external drive and copy the location
In the terminal enter
sudo chmod -R 775 Plex media folder location; ie media/computername/ntfsdrivevolumename
