Linux smb share library update problems

[JuJuJurassic 49]

I wanted to put this up here as I spent a few hours finding the solution and hope this helps someone else. It took 5 minutes to implement the solution.

I run Emby on an Ubuntu box. I use another box, called the DL box, to add audio files to the disk in the Emby server. The Emby server presents a smb share via samba that the DL box uses to copy files to. Emby has its music library on the disk that is presented out.

The problem was;

The DL box was moving and copying files into the correct area of the Emby library, via the smb share,  but they were not being seen by library scans and therefore not added.

The cause of this was permissions and ownership. The Emby service was in effect running as the user “Fred” but the DL box was connecting and saving files to the smb share as the user “DL” therefore the user and group membership of the new files was DL not Fred, so Emby couldn’t see them.

The solution.

In the smb.conf file add the lines

force user = Fred

force group = Fred

 

Remember Emby is running as Fred

That solved the problem. The new files were copied over with the right ownership and could be seen by Emby.

 

You can also use force directory = 0777 and force create = 0777 to allow everyone to access the directory, but that’s a very bad idea.

 

I hope this is of use, it took a long while to work out the problem, but minutes to solve.

[Luke 42078]

Thanks for sharing.