Library access

[AlphardvB 0]

Goodafternoon,

I have a Raspi4. connected to it are 2  (1 NTFS, the other Exfat) external HDD's which are accessible within raspbian

Now I'm setting up my EMBY and I need to add a library. Now here's the problem: I cannot connect to the external drives. It's got to be something with write-issues, but what exactly and how to solve it? And please: explain to me in simple english please. I'm almost 40 and not able to understand difficult English anymore

[mastrmind11 717]

23 hours ago, AlphardvB said:

Goodafternoon,

I have a Raspi4. connected to it are 2  (1 NTFS, the other Exfat) external HDD's which are accessible within raspbian

Now I'm setting up my EMBY and I need to add a library. Now here's the problem: I cannot connect to the external drives. It's got to be something with write-issues, but what exactly and how to solve it? And please: explain to me in simple english please. I'm almost 40 and not able to understand difficult English anymore

add the emby user to the group that has read/write access to the drives.

[AlphardvB 0]

Hi,

thanks for your reaction. But thats where it goes wrong: I tried it but that doesn’t work. I did the following:

in the terminal I used the command “sudo adduser arnhem”. That went well and I got the message that the user was added. The next thing I read was to give it the same rights as the root so in the terminal I typed “sudo adduser arnhem root”. Also that went well and user was added. I rebooted the pi and went to the installationpage of emby. I named the user arnhem, filled in the same password that I used while creating the user in the terminal and wanted to add a library. So I named it and I tried to add /media/pi/movies but I dont get any futher than /media/pi/ and than it goes blanc. And I really don’t understand it anymore cause I can see the drives in the file-explorer and I can add folders to those same drives

[mark-in-dallas 86]

mastermind was not suggesting adding the emby user account that you created to the group, he was instructing you to add the "emby" user to the group.  I.e.  if the hard drive storing Emby files is owned by the amhem user, then you need to add emby to the amhem user group.

Emby creates it own emby user account, and that is the account that needs to have access to the hard drives.

[Luke 37065]

@AlphardvB please let us know if this helps. Thanks.

[AlphardvB 0]

The owner is pi and the group also is pi.

I installed Plex and than I immediatly can add those external drives. But in Emby? No way thats gonna work. So is it better for me to quit trying Emby and get emby premium only for iptv and plex premium for streaming other stuff?

[Luke 37065]

Hi, don't you want a personal media server? It's very simple if you follow our file permissions guide:

 

[mark-in-dallas 86]

Its blank because the emby user does not have access to the pi group.  If you just add emby to the pi group that should allow you to add the media libraries.

[AlphardvB 0]

Well,

I've added emby to pi-group. and suddenly I lost my VNC-connection. So I have to wait till tomorrow to let you know how it went. 

[Luke 37065]

Let us know how you get on. Thanks !

[AlphardvB 0]

Goodafternoon,

I made a whole new installation so, if someone could help me from scratch on than yes please

 

EDIT:

I installed emby, futher I didnt do anything. Than I connected my 2 drives and what happens? My Raspi turns off and doesnt switch on anymore. Only when I disconnect the 2 drives. The 2 drives are NTFS-formatted.

Edited September 4, 2020 by AlphardvB

[Luke 37065]

I'm sorry to hear about your RPI problem. Let us know if you're able to solve that.

[AlphardvB 0]

Well, the raspi is up and running again but still it doesnt work   Im almost crying

[Luke 37065]

What exactly is happening?

[AlphardvB 0]

I have done a new installation, did the sudo apt-get updates and sudo apt-get upgrades commands. So far so good. The next thing is installing emby. Still so far so good. Than i plugged in the usb harddrive. And again: I can see it in the file-explorer. I named it “kids” cause there’s gonna be stuff on for my son-to-be. So i see the drive and when I ask for the properties the owner and group are “root”. 
 

now i open emby and have to configure it. So my username will also be “root” with a chosen password. Than I need to add a library so I go to the path /media/pi and than you should see that external usb-drive but it remains blanc. 
so now i need to know what to do, step by step. I can make a new installation, no problem. I use raspy imager and than the option “Raspberry Pi OS (32-bit). 

[mark-in-dallas 86]

As both I and mastermind11 said before, the "emby" user needs to have access to the drives, not the emby username you created, and if the drive is only going to be used for emby you should chown ithe drive to emby:emby, or whatever your linux username and group are, then grant emby access to that  group.

The Emby username you create allows you to access Emby, it does not allow Emby to access files or drives.

 

I am fairly new to Linux myself and got into a whole lot of trouble making everything root:root, to the point that I started over from scratch, reinstalled Linux and Emby, then assigned drives and directories to my username and granted emby access to my group.

[AlphardvB 0]

Thanks for your reply Mark-in-Dallas. So tell me: which commands do I use? And could you tell me what they do, so I understand it better? Those guides are way out of my league. Im a very simple noob

[Luke 37065]

Did you check out our file permissions guide?

 

[mark-in-dallas 86]

If you have not yet created your Emby folders on the storage drive then you can open a terminal and change ownership and access of the hard drive using this command:

sudo chown user_name:group_name path_to_drive

If you have already created the folders, such as TV, Movies, Music, etc., then you can recursively change the owner and group of the drive and folders using this:

sudo chown -R user_name:group_name path_to_drive

Be sure to replace user_name and group_name with either your own linux username or emby, and the path_to_drive with the actual path to the hard drive.

If you use your username, then you will need to add the emby user to your group using this command:  sudo usermod -a -G  your_group emby

If after doing that you are still having problems open a terminal and type:  ls -l /path_to_dtive and paste the results here, so we can take a look at  permissions.

Edited September 8, 2020 by mark-in-dallas

[AlphardvB 0]

This is what I got. I didnt make any groups yet. Only installed raspbian and plugged in my harddrive (ntfs). 

[mark-in-dallas 86]

Okay, what you did was to change ownership of the kids drive to pi but assigned it to the emby group, which may work but I'm still new enough to Linux that I would not count on it.  What I would suggest is to change it back to pi:pi, then add emby to the pi group using these commands:

sudo chown pi:pi /media/pi/kids

sudo usermod -a -G pi emby

After doing this, then go to Emby and try adding the library

 

Edited September 8, 2020 by mark-in-dallas

[AlphardvB 0]

So first I need to add the user “emby”. Correct? And I do that by the command “sudo adduser emby”?

[mark-in-dallas 86]

4 minutes ago, AlphardvB said:

So first I need to add the user “emby”. Correct? And I do that by the command “sudo adduser emby”?

No, the emby user already exists.  You can verify this in the terminal by typing:  id emby 

Edited September 8, 2020 by mark-in-dallas

[AlphardvB 0]

[mark-in-dallas 86]

I'm not sure what to make of the results displayed for id emby.  That should have displayed results similar to this:

mark@Media-PC:~$ id emby
uid=999(emby) gid=999(emby) groups=999(emby),44(video),135(render)

All of your commands look good though, except for the sudo pi:pi /pi /media/kids, which is missing an actual instruction and I'm guessing that the response was something along the lines of no operation specified, or missing or invalid instruction?

Have you tried opening Emby and adding the library?
 

Edited September 8, 2020 by mark-in-dallas