Linux permissions for emby

[seancbkk 0]

I've installed Emby on my machine running Linux Mint 17.3

 

When I try to add media libraries however emby cannot 'see; my folders.

 

I have a separate 1TB internal drive which is mounted as /media/sean/1TB    on that drive are folders for Movies and TV Shows.

 

Emby displays /media/sean/1TB but when I click on it the screen is blank.

 

 

Emby also shows the notification - For Linux, you must grant the Emby system user at least read access to your storage locations.

 

But I cannot find any instructions on how to do this, despite extensive searching.   

 

Can someone please point me to a tutorial or instructions?  

 

This seems like such an obvious situation that many people would find themselves in (wanting their media on something other than their /home drive) yet I can't find anything showing how to do that.

 

 

Thanks!

[fc7 123]

As the message states you need to grant at least read access permissions to the folders and files on the disk.

Is the internal drive formatted with NTFS? Ext? Any other type of FS?

 

Depending on how are the current permissions settings it may be enough to add the emby user to the group that have access to the files.

Another approach would be to change the file and folders ownership; or change the ownership plus the perms.

A quick and dirty fix would be to run this commands as root:
 

chown emby.emby /media/sean/1TB -R
chmod 755 /media/sean/1TB
find /media/sean/1TB -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find /media/sean/1TB -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

Is not the best approach but it should work.

This commands will:

 

1. Change the ownership of all the files and folders on the disk to emby user and emby group.
2. Give read and write access to the mount point for emby user and read access for group and everyone.
3. Same as 2 but to all subfolders, recursively, under the mount point.
4. Same as 2 and 3 but to all files, recursively, under the mount point.

You must read/learn about users, groups and file permissions in Linux. There are loads of information about it in google.

Hope this solves your problem.

 

Happy new year and welcome to Emby!

 

Edit: fixed html characters that broke the commands


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Edited December 31, 2015 by fc7

[Exodus 0]

I have the same issue, this does not work for me.

 

I'm running fresh install of Lubuntu on a laptop, and I'm using an external 4TB HDD connected through USB with all my media files. The file system is NTFS.

 

I have added the disk to my fstab file and I have tried the commands above as well as:

 

    sudo chown -R emby:emby /media_disk/

    sudo chown -R emby /media_disk/

    sudo chown -R :emby /media_disk/

    sudo chgrp -R emby /media_disk/

 

Obviously the /media_disk/ part contains the full path.

 

Nothing is happening, emby still cannot see anything inside the media_disk (it finds the disk though), and looking at permissions owner remains firmly set as root no matter what I do.

 

I'm afraid my Linux noobiness is showing, as I have very little experience with working with user and group permissions. 

[fc7 123]

I have the same issue, this does not work for me.

 

I'm running fresh install of Lubuntu on a laptop, and I'm using an external 4TB HDD connected through USB with all my media files. The file system is NTFS.

 

I have added the disk to my fstab file and I have tried the commands above as well as:

 

    sudo chown -R emby:emby /media_disk/

    sudo chown -R emby /media_disk/

    sudo chown -R :emby /media_disk/

    sudo chgrp -R emby /media_disk/

 

Obviously the /media_disk/ part contains the full path.

 

Nothing is happening, emby still cannot see anything inside the media_disk (it finds the disk though), and looking at permissions owner remains firmly set as root no matter what I do.

 

I'm afraid my Linux noobiness is showing, as I have very little experience with working with user and group permissions. 

 

That's why I asked in a previous reply which kind of filesystem and drive (external/internal) the user was using.

 

Keep in mind that NTFS is not native in Linux, so which driver are you using? Kernel or FUSE (ntfs-3g)?

If you are using the FUSE option, you should read this Arch wiki page which is very informative: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NTFS-3G

[Exodus 0]

Hey thanks for replying so quickly. I am not sure which file driver I am using, whatever comes with Lubuntu.

It seems to perfectly in every other regard, its only emby that cannot see the files. 

 

EDIT:

Ok, reading the article, I now see what you mean. The Fstab entry, cool stuff. How can I make sure I really have NTFS-3G though?

 

EDIT2:

 

So ntfs-3g is installed with Lubuntu, and so I added this line to fstab:

 

    /dev/sda1      /media/USERNAME/media_disk     ntfs-3g     uid=emby,gid=emby     0     0

 

And it didn't work. Didn't crash my distro though.

Edited January 5, 2016 by Exodus

[fc7 123]

Hey thanks for replying so quickly. I am not sure which file driver I am using, whatever comes with Lubuntu.

It seems to perfectly in every other regard, its only emby that cannot see the files. 

 

EDIT:

Ok, reading the article, I now see what you mean. The Fstab entry, cool stuff. How can I make sure I really have NTFS-3G though?

 

EDIT2:

 

So ntfs-3g is installed with Lubuntu, and so I added this line to fstab:

 

    /dev/sda1      /media/USERNAME/media_disk     ntfs-3g     uid=emby,gid=emby     0     0

 

And it didn't work. Didn't crash my distro though.

 

 

Can you be more specific? Is the mount point real path "/media/USERNAME/media_disk"?

Instead of jumping to the fstab stuff I would start by manually mounting the disk (with the mount command) and play around with the mount options until you can make Emby see the drive.

Once you get to that point move on to the fstab stuff.

 

On the other hand things may be a lot easier if you just move to a Linux native fs like ext4, xfs, etc. Not sure it's an option for you tough.

[Exodus 0]

Yeah I wish, but with 2 Terrabyte of movies and series its gonna be hard to move those out of the way for a format.

 

Yeah that's the real path, and as I said, it works perfectly in every other way. I can browse or play the files, which I why I have not looked at alternative mounting options. Obviously the drive is mounted, and works fine in every other respect, Emby just can't see it, and no matter what I do I can't seem to give the Emby user or Emby group the rights to do so.

[fc7 123]

Can you run "ls -l /media/USERNAME" and post the output here?

With the disk mounted of course.

 

 

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Edited January 6, 2016 by fc7

[Exodus 0]

Sure, here:

 

drwxrwxrwx 1 emby emby 4096 jan.   4 14:45 media_disk

It bears saying that Emby can see THAT (media_disk) folder, it always could. Just nothing beyond that folder. There should be at least a Series and a Movies folder beyond this one.

 

EDIT: Here is the same line on the media_disk folder:

 

drwxrwxrwx 1 emby emby     0 jan.   4 16:50 Backup
drwxrwxrwx 1 emby emby     0 sep.  23 21:26 eb2321c1f7df61af073b02e4
drwxrwxrwx 1 emby emby     0 jan.   4 11:15 MMA
drwxrwxrwx 1 emby emby 32768 jan.   2 07:20 Movies
drwxrwxrwx 1 emby emby     0 aug.   3 03:42 $RECYCLE.BIN
drwxrwxrwx 1 emby emby 32768 jan.   2 08:08 Series
drwxrwxrwx 1 emby emby     0 des.  25 22:55 System Volume Information

Edited January 6, 2016 by Exodus

[kayalemao 0]

Same problem for me, any solution yet

[Luke 37063]

Same problem for me, any solution yet

 

Hi, did you read post #2? Can you describe your issue in more detail? Thanks!

[gottifour 0]

So 'm having the same issue as well.

 

Here is the output of ls -l. I ran them on two of my drives at the root level...I think.

 

Thanks for any help!

 

jasper@jasper-Ubuntu:~$ ls -l /media/jasper

total 72

drwxr-xr-x 26 root   root    4096 Apr 27  2014 16113905-40b8-4b8f-8dca-a49c3cae65ad

drwxrwxrwx  1 jasper jasper 49152 Mar 20  2016 FOUR

drwxrwxrwx  1 jasper jasper 20480 Oct  2 18:44 Videos

[DRAGUNSLAYER 2]

Look at that...another dead end post without a resolution.

[Luke 37063]

@@DRAGUNSLAYER can you please describe the issue that you're having? Thanks !

[DRAGUNSLAYER 2]

@@DRAGUNSLAYER can you please describe the issue that you're having? Thanks !

My apologies, that post was not my finest moment. I had spent 2 hours troubleshooting emby not being able to delete from it's own library. Eventually figured it out, my bad. Thanks for the response though.

[Luke 37063]

Thanks. What was the solution?

[tdiguy 96]

Seems like a few people having issues with linux permissions.

This is a good site on it: https://www.guru99.com/file-permissions.html

As with so many things linux there are multiple ways to the same destination.

 

For me i generally just use:

sudo chown -R emby.MEDIA /media/emby/

 

Of course you would want to change /media/emby to whatever mount you use also MEDIA is completely optional thats just the group i use so my main user who is part of that group can browse to the media easily. 

Remember along with read permissions emby needs execute permissions on any sub folders to be able to go into the folders. If you use the command i put there it will change the permissions on every sub folder.

[EODCrafter 179]

Seems like this would be a good Place to go too....

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/32218-file-permissions-guide-for-new-linux-users/

[tdiguy 96]

I would also emphasis testing mount commands and such first from the command line before changing the fstab at all. Mistakes in the fstab can be a pain to correct, especially if you run a headless server like i do where there isnt normally a monitor, keyboard or mouse connected. Personally i prefer anything other than system drives be mounted by editing the /etc/rc.local I test my mount commands first to make sure they work as expected then put them in there. and if i make a typo or screw it up the system still boots.

[DRAGUNSLAYER 2]

Thanks. What was the solution?

My ftp imports carried some permissions. My solution was to just let radarr handle the imports.

[Luke 37063]

Thanks for the feedback.