Hello all, I’ve been reading this community from the outside for some time, and I finally decided to dip my toe into Linux a bit. I have an old PC I was using to run Plex through a Windows install, but this is now a Linux Mint Cinnamon machine.

I have Plex Media Server installed and running, however I am having a hell of a time getting it to see my external drive where my media is located.

Trying a bunch of research, it seems like it is a permissions issue that I cannot seem to shake. Plex is able to see the drive, though nothing in it. I’ve googled as much as I can, but none of the suggestions seem to help me. I’ve tried to run the command chown, though I get an operation not successful error in return.

ls -la never shows the plex user or group listed, and I’ve tried for about 2 hours trying various things and have had no success.

Additionally, the other two drives I have connected are stuck in read only as well.

Anything I may have overlooked?

  • @Maxy
    6•1 month ago

    To change the ownership of the files, you should only have to run sudo chown -R user:group directory. -R makes chown run recursively, so it will modify the directory and all subdirectories and files. Do note that changing the ownership to plex:plex or something similar would leave your user unable to normally modify the files. My solution to this was to add both my regular user and the plex (in my case jellyfin) user to the same group. That way both users can easily see and modify the files, as long as the group has read/write permissions (the 2nd column of rwx in ls -Al). If necessary, you can add group permissions with sudo chmod -R g+rw directory.

    On a side note: have you considered using jellyfin? It’s a completely free alternative to plex, which recently received a truly massive update with tons of new features. Some people prefer plex’ overall experience, but I’ve been running jellyfin with almost no complaints.

    Small disclaimer: I’m writing from mobile, so the commands might not be 100% correct. Run at your own risk, and NEVER POINT A CHMOD/CHOWN COMMAND AT SYSTEM DIRECTORIES LIKE / OR /USR. That’s one of the easiest ways to completely break your system.