Plex Can't Find My Files. Easy Fix!

Plex can't find my files!
This is a common complaint with Linux users and
many fixes aren't so easy.
Until now.

Mount your media drives so they can be accessed by Plex in a few simple steps.
After hours of wading through posts of how to get Plex to recognize your media drives I have come up with a simple solution that does not require changing your fstab file or changing permissions of your drive.

It also doesn't require you to change the user to root in the Plex config file. Instead I will show you how to change permissions of the folder where your hard drives are mounted.

This tutorial assumes that your hard drives are mounted in file system/media/(User Name) folder.
If your drives are mounted in a different folder then use that path with these instructions.

First we need to mount you hard drive(s) that contain your movie / tv files.

Next open the file system folder. You do this by clicking on File System in the side bar of your file browser.

Now right click on a blank area of that screen and select "Open as Administrator"
Enter your password in the permissions box.

A new window will open up. You are now in the File System folder and have root permissions.

Right click on the media folder and select Properties.
From the Properties window select the Permissions tab at the top.

Change the Owner to your user name. Change folder access to Create and Delete files.

Next change Group to your user name and in the Folder Access area change it to Access Files.

Under Others change Folder Access to Access Files.

Now click on Apply Permissions to Enclosed files.

Double click on the media folder to open it.
You will see a folder with your user name.
Do the same as you did above using the same steps.

When finished close the file browser windows.
Unmount you hard drives and restart your pc or you can use the following command to restart the Plex Media service;

sudo service plexmediaserver restart

Now mount your hard drive(s)
Open Plex and have it scan your media drive(s).
It should now recognize the drive and files and add them to your library.

Enjoy and hope this was helpful.

TaZ

New Digital Rights War On The Horizon

I was reading an article found here;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7825428.stm

Seems a new consortium of entertainment, retail and IT companies that want to set new standards to transform how consumers buy, access and play digital content.

Apple is against this new gang of thugs and I applaud them for putting up resistance.

A quote from the article;

DECE President Mitch Singer, who is the chief technology officer for Sony Pictures, told the BBC. "All of the companies in this consortium realise if we can do this and do this right we have the potential for a very large market."

What this translates into is they have the potential to make huge amounts of money while squeezing what little consumer rights that are left out of existence.
They want full control over what you can hear or watch and when!

And what about compatibility?
How much DRM can a device take. Especially an older device?
The correct answer to any problems with their DRM on my older devices is not "Well you need to buy a new device."
No! I will not go out and buy new hardware just so it works with your restrictive and most likely performance hindering DRM!!!

I also have this question I would like to pose to the industry and the consortium.
Over the many years of purchasing audio and video media I have amassed the following;

Over 300 '45 records
Over 800 LP's
Approx. 500 audio cassettes
Approx. 200 to 300 VHS and Beta video tapes.

In the audio category I have probably purchased a song at least two and possibly three times.
I have purchased many video titles that I can no longer watch because Sony was greedy and would not license the Beta format to other companies and that format was killed off.
That leaves me with the rest of my video collection that is in VHS format and is being phased out in favor of digital media like DVD's and BlueRay.

Since I have already purchased all this media (Many more then once!) should I not have access to this DRM protected content I already purchased for free?
If you would like, I would be more then happy to drag my whole collection into each and every CEO's office of every company in this consortium to prove that I already bought the rights to listen to it when I want to and where I want to!
And I won't leave until we have a complete inventory of what I own so that you can't say I don't have the right to listen to or watch it in the future.

How much do you expect a consumer to take until they say "ENOUGH!"
Implementing this type of restrictive protection will cut down your profits even more then what they already are in this weakening economy.
History has shown that consumers don't want DRM and Apple has proved this with sales figures since dropping the DRM on their music.

TaZMAn