Plex media Server cannot find media

[Peter_Bannon]

Hi guys, just ran into this issue today. As others have mentioned in other forums the problem is that the "plex" user doesn't belong to the "plugdev" group which is the only group that has access to the mounted devices.
All you need to do is to add plex to that group by using gpasswd

sudo gpasswd -a plex plugdev

To check that the "plex" user belongs to that group we can issue the following command:

groups plex

Which should display something like: plex: plex plugdev

Restart your computer and try to access the mounted media with Plex Media Manager. If for some reason that doesn't work then you might need to add plex to your own user group. Some may consider this a bit risky since plex would be able to do almost anything that your user (in my case "jualin") can do.
Either way, we use gpasswd again:

sudo gpasswd -a plex yourUser

If none of this works then check the permissions of your mounted media using "ls -l". In my case my Windows partition is mounted on /windows/ and the output of "ls -l" shows that the group (the 4th column) that has access is "plugdev"

jualin@cari:/$ ls -l
drwxrwx---    1 root plugdev  8192 Jan 14 00:16 windows
jualin@cari:/$

Hope this helps!

I can verify that adding the plex user to the plugdev group worked for me. Running the media server on a laptop and it was only picking up 2 albums out of about 70 which were newly downloaded albums. After modifying the user groups its now recognising all the files.

They could do with updating the verbose information to reflect permission based issues rather than just "removing parent from the mapping"

[applepiefrost]

Most of the methods posted above will work but I have found the easiest way is to change Plex Media Server user to your own user account instead of the plex account.

Type this command to edit the plex script.
sudo nano /etc/default/plexmediaserver

Replace the "plex" user account with your own account.

PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_USER=plex
Change to
PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_USER=your user name

control+O to save

Run once
http://localhost:32400/web/index.html#!/dashboard

Stop:
sudo service plexmediaserver stop

add user to group:
sudo addgroup plex youruser
sudo addgroup youruser plex

start:
sudo service plexmediaserver start

I have messed around with all the other methods and they have worked e.g. mounting partition in different folders and changing permissions but find this method above far easier.

And NTFS is fine.

Hope this helps

Did something change with Plex causing this to no longer work?

I'm using Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS and Plex Media Server 2.7.4

The problems I'm having are these:

The file plexmediaserver doesn't seem to exist in /etc/default

stark@FRIDAY:/etc/default$ ls -l | grep plex
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  832 Aug 10 19:18 plexmediaserver.prev

plexmediaserver.prev exists and contains the same info (I assume) as "plexmediaserver" would have contained. I changed the username in that file from "plex" to "stark".

However, when the Plex Media Server is run, it's still being run as "plex" and not "stark".

stark@FRIDAY:/etc/default$ ps aux | grep plex
plex     31272  0.0  0.0   4508   836 ?        Ss   19:31   0:00 /bin/sh -c LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/plexmediaserver /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex\ Media\ Server
plex     31274 15.4  1.3 520804 111656 ?       Sl   19:31   0:01 /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server

When I try to add a portable drive to my library, I only see the root of the drive and not any of the underlying folders.


Has anyone else tried this recently and knows what to do? Any help is appreciated.

[applepiefrost]

So a little follow up to myself. I stumbled across this thread: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2139064 where user dcstar says

/media is a System Folder for exclusive use by the System to mount and unmount removable devices. It should not be used for anything that requires a fixed mount point.

If you want fixed locations, create a mount point in /mnt and edit your /etc/fstab files to use it.

So I changed the mounting location away from /media and now all of a sudden my files are appearing in Plex Media Server. I don't know if it's the same answer for everyone, but that's what fixed it for me.

[ajgreeny]

So a little follow up to myself. I stumbled across this thread: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2139064 where user dcstar says


So I changed the mounting location away from /media and now all of a sudden my files are appearing in Plex Media Server. I don't know if it's the same answer for everyone, but that's what fixed it for me.

I have had success in a similar way.

If visitors bring USBs with photos/videos which I wish to show using PMS on my TV using a smart-set-top-box with a side-loaded plex client, I have added an alias for usb which unmounts the usb after insertion them mounts it to a folder in my home created specifically for the purpose.

alias usb='sudo umount /dev/sdf1 && sudo mount /dev/sdf1 /home/$USER/Plex-client/'

sdf1 is the device name for all usb disks when inserted (unless it's a second inserted disk when it will be sdg1).

Following that, and after a quick rescan of that library in the plex webindex page in a browser, the pics or videos all show fine using plex.

[colin.p]

So a little follow up to myself. I stumbled across this thread: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2139064 where user dcstar says


So I changed the mounting location away from /media and now all of a sudden my files are appearing in Plex Media Server. I don't know if it's the same answer for everyone, but that's what fixed it for me.

Well after an afternoon with at least a dozen tabs open in Chrome and several reboots and the odd curse word, I can now say that my external NTFS drive now allows media to show up in Plex. This last issue with the mount point of said drive was the clincher. If it breaks again - I fix it with the 8lb maul.