Arch Linux User Repository

@fryfrog: I solved my issue. See https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1871148 for my troubleshooting effort.

tl;dr, my ~/.cache/pikaur directory was a symlink to an NFS share, and for whatever reason this location was causing the bsdtar unpacking of the rpm to have permissions of 750, not 755.

@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. :/