Arch Linux User Repository

Flagging Out of Date:

This package is the non-plexpass package, it gets updated less frequently. Be sure to flag the right package. You can find the plexpass version at https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/plex-media-server-plexpass/

Current Issues:

The plex user's home directory needs to be changed, but likely can't if Plex Media Server was running when you upgrade. The package will tell you what to do, but of course that is easy to miss. The soluiton is to run sudo systemctl stop plexmediaserver ; sudo usermod -d /usr/lib/plexmediaserver plex ; sudo systemctl start plexmediaserver.

@fryfrog

Here is a snippet of output from tar -tvf plex-media-server-1.18.0.1944-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz:

drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2019-10-14 18:34 usr/lib/plexmediaserver/
-rwxr-x--- root/root   1483304 2019-10-14 18:34 usr/lib/plexmediaserver/CrashUploader
-rwxr-x--- root/root    415728 2019-10-14 18:34 usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Commercial Skipper
-rwxr-x--- root/root   4223416 2019-10-14 18:34 usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex DLNA Server
-rwxr-x--- root/root    239736 2019-10-14 18:34 usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Fingerprinter
-rwxr-x--- root/root   6576008 2019-10-14 18:34 usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Scanner
-rwxr-x--- root/root  21909120 2019-10-14 18:34 usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server
-rwxr-x--- root/root    731336 2019-10-14 18:34 usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Relay
-rwxr-x--- root/root     12544 2019-10-14 18:34 usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Script Host
-rwxr-x--- root/root    267336 2019-10-14 18:34 usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Transcoder
-rwxr-x--- root/root   5540648 2019-10-14 18:34 usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Tuner Service

So it's definitely getting stored in the pkg tarball that way. Where am I missing the permissions setting? I am using pikaur as my AUR helper, do you think that could be causing this?

@techwiz My umask for both my normal and root user are both 022, so I don't think there's anything out of the ordinary there.

I do notice some messages similar to the following (this is from my memory, I rebooted for a new kernel):

filesystem:  755  package:  750

Which suggests the package is overwriting the files with 750 permissions, even after I've set them with sudo chmod o+rx -R /usr/lib/plexmediaserver. Curiously, I did check the install command in the PKGBUILD, and it has permissions of 755. I don't know where the 750 permissions are coming from. It doesn't appear to be my umask (022 leads to permissions of 755, from what I remember about umask).

@ectospasm, do you have a custom umask set in your .bashrc or the shell defaults? Perhaps it's overriding fakeroot and causing files to get created with the wrong permissions.

Try leaving it owned to root:root but with read and execute for the other group. This is what mine looks like, for comparison...

drwxr-xr-x   3 root root   51 Oct  7 15:33  lib
drwxr-xr-x  10 root root   49 Oct  7 15:33  Resources
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root root 1.5M Oct  2 15:00  CrashUploader
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root root 358K Oct  2 15:00 'Plex Commercial Skipper'

Also, super weird that it ends up 750. Maybe check for a systemd tmpfiles that is overriding your current one? And in your ./pkg dir, see what the files look like? Mine are owned fryfrog:fryfrog but still have the same 755 permissions as above.

@fryfrog:

My plex user is not a member of the root group, and every time I look after an upgrade the permissions on /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Media Server are 750 (rwxr-x---), which means the plexmediaserver.service can't start (can't read or execute Plex Media Server). Here is my /etc/conf.d/plexmediaserver, in its entirety:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/lib                                                                                                                                                  
PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_HOME=/usr/lib/plexmediaserver                                                                                                                                               
PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_APPLICATION_SUPPORT_DIR=/var/lib/plex                                                                                                                                       
PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_MAX_PLUGIN_PROCS=6                                                                                                                                                          
PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_TMPDIR=/tmp                                                                                                                                                                 
TMPDIR=/tmp

So I guess if it is improper to have everything under /usr/lib/plexmediaserver owned by plex:plex, then the install commands in the PKGBUILD should apply at least 755 permissions/modes, not 750 like it appears now.

EDIT: It looks like the main install command does have 755, I wonder if a previous incarnation of plex-media-server had 750, and for whatever reason makepkg -sri isn't overwriting the modes with 755.

@ectospasm, my /usr/lib/plexmediaserver is root:root as deep as I looked and everything works fine. Can you dig into why yours isn't working w/o being owned to plex:plex? The /var/lib/plex folder should be plex:plex since that is where it stores all the data.

Have you maybe modified your /etc/conf.d/plexmediaserver? Maybe PLEX_MEDIA_SERVER_APPLICATION_SUPPORT_DIR=/var/lib/plex that line is pointed at /usr instead of /var? Or maybe your tmp dir is in there?

Is there any reason why the main install command doesn't set the ownership/group of /usr/lib/plexmediaserver to "plex:plex"? I find that I have to issue the following command every time I want to launch Plex Media Server after an upgrade:

sudo chown plex:plex -R /usr/lib/plexmediaserver

Otherwise, Plex Media Server fails to launch. I've cloned the AUR Git repository, but it's unclear to me how to issue a pull request for my updated PKGBUILD.

Please, someone remove the outdated label. Some absent-minded person has marked it incorrectly.

You should probably make a habit of doing systemctl daemon-reload and systemctl restart <service> for updates. It is a PKGBUILD/AUR "standard" to not restart daemons so that service isn't disrupted and the restart can be done as needed.

I wish there was a hook of some sort that could be used to make it a user options. :/

I need to run this after each update otherwise I cannot play anything, browsing the library works though.

sudo systemctl restart plexmediaserver.service

Can you perhaps add that as a post step so we get the service reloaded?