Remote image selection fails with UnauthorizedAccessException despite valid paths and permissions

[denzoid 57]

Hi all,

I’m running Emby in a Docker container on Unraid, and I’ve encountered a persistent issue when trying to change artwork for certain media items.

The problem:

• When I attempt to change the poster or artwork, Emby displays broken thumbnails in the image picker.

• Clicking any of those options results in an "Access to the path is denied" error.

• The image URLs are valid and hosted on remote providers likeFanart.tv or TMDB. Emby reaches them, but fails when saving locally.

What I’ve verified:

• The folder Emby is trying to write to exists and is writable.

• I can manually create files inside the folder from within the container.

• Emby is running as root inside the container.

• Metadata is correctly matched, and initial artwork downloads work.

• The issue only occurs when trying to change artwork after initial metadata fetch.

What I’ve tried:

• Removing and re-adding provider IDs to force metadata refresh

• Restarting the container

• Clearing the contents of the remote-images folder

• Manually uploading artwork (which works fine)

What I’m looking for:

• Is this a known bug in Emby’s remote image handler?

• Is there a workaround to force Emby to re-fetch and save remote images properly?

• Could this be a regression in the current version?

Any help or insight would be appreciated. I’ve done extensive diagnostics and confirmed this is not a filesystem or permission issue—it appears to be internal to Emby.

Thanks!

embyserver9162025.txt

Edited September 16, 2025 by denzoid
added log file

[Luke 42077]

Hi there, please attach the Emby server log from when the problem occurred:

How to Report a Problem

Thanks!

 

[denzoid 57]

3 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi there, please attach the Emby server log from when the problem occurred:

How to Report a Problem

Thanks!

 

The second I hit post I realized I forgot the log, thanks.

[Luke 42077]

Looks like you configure da custom cache path but the server is being denied write access to it:

	Data path: /config
	Application path: /system
	System.UnauthorizedAccessException: System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path '/mnt/cache/appdata/EmbyServer/cache/cache/remote-images/5/5c297ee6-8b45-99d4-0c1c-fec3e6b5fc76.jpeg' is denied.

I would suggest blanking out the option and going back to the default. The server will not retry the failed image downloads, so it will require manual refreshes of metadata.

[Luke 42077]

Quote

Is this a known bug in Emby’s remote image handler?

No. This is an error raised by your file system.

[denzoid 57]

Fixed

Cause: Permissions on the Emby cache subfolders (/config/cache/fanart-movies, /config/cache/tmdb-movies2, /config/cache/omdb, /config/cache/tvdb-movies, etc.) were inconsistent. Some folders/files were owned by bin:bin with restrictive permissions, which prevented the container from writing new thumbnails and caused repeated “Access denied” exceptions.

Fix:

• Ensured all cache subfolders were owned by root and fully writable:

 

docker exec -it EmbyServer sh -c 'chown -R 0:0 /config/cache && chmod -R 777 /config/cache'

• Restarted the Emby container.

• Tested poster search — thumbnails now display correctly and no “Access denied” errors occur.