Plex Librarys not updating & Plugins cant enable

QuickBox Support
#1

Hi to all,

I have installed Plex via Quickbox correctly BUT i encounter two major problems.

a.) When i delete manually a movie… lets say i delete a movie from the ssh terminal, then Plex isnt updating its movie Library. The movie is still there and when i want to play it it spits out an error “Please check that the file exists and the necessary drive is mounted”. The Plex movie Library also marks all this movies as “Unavailable”. Why is Plex not updating its Library? I have deleted 15 movies and the movies still appear in the Library. I have done a “Refresh All” & “Empty Trash” already many times but Plex is not able to remove the movies from its Library. The only solution i found is deleting the Library and creating a new Library. But isnt it that Plex MUST update its Library if it notices a file change in the media Library? When a file is added it works fine… it recognizes it, downloads movie posters etc… BUT when i delete a movie or a file it isnt removing it from the Library… even when i do a Refresh All & Empty Trash the movies still appear there.

b.) I have installed from within Plex the Sub-Zero Plugin which is for downloading Subtitles. I configurd it AND i enabled the Plugin it in the Agents Settings by marking it as enabled AND by moving the Plugin at the top of the Agents list. But when i go into the Channels menu where the Plugin is it stil says “I’m not enabled! Please enable me for some of your libraries in your server settings; currently i do nothing”. I have already enabled the Plugin in the Agent Settings, also i have selected the CORRECT Agent when i created a new movie Library. I even tried to restart my VPS but i cant get the Plugin to work because it says i need to enable it.

The above errors leads me to the conclusion that MAYBE something is going wrong with some file permissions? But i have installed correctly Plex with the instructions that i found here. I did from within the ssh shell the following commands:

box install plex

Then i issued the following commands one by one:

systemctl stop plexmediaserver.service
mkdir -p /var/lib/plexmediaserver
adduser --quiet --system --shell /bin/bash --home /var/lib/plexmediaserver --group plex
chown -R plex:plex /var/lib/plexmediaserver
systemctl start plexmediaserver.service

Finally i also claimed successfully the Plex Server. I dont know where the problem is. Does anyone have encountered the same problems?

Thansk in advance

George

#2

Have you looked at the plex logs? Have you consulted the Plex forums? Have you searched the Plex forums or the Plex subreddit? Have you checked the Plex website?

The answers are there, you just need to look.

#3

Yes i have searched already the Plex Forums & Plex Subreddit, Also i checked the Plex Website. I found other people who had the same problem but there was no solution posted.

#4

What do the logs say? Plex has extensive logging…one dedicates to the media scanner which should cover why its not removing the media. My guess is this is bug.

My guess on the 2nd issue is an ownership issue but again this should show up in the Plex logs.

#5

You’ve followed this?

#6

Of course i followed the official guidelines which are is found here:

George

#7

Not sure if we’ll find the answer here in the QuickBox forum to this query as it is very limited to the audience using it. Best bet would be to do as @RXWatcher suggests, and submit posts via Plex.forums as well as the plugin maintainers repositories and/or own sites.

However, I do hope that if the developers give you a response that you’d be so kind as to share with us :slight_smile:

#8

Just as a followup, I installed the sub-zero plugin via the Install Channels option since they specifically tell you to do it that way in the official install instructions and it installed fine…no errors when going into the config via the Channels section.

Is that how you installed it?

Followup:
I went to look for the plugin and it’s in the proper place:
/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins
with the proper owner and permissions:
drwxr-xr-x 3 plex plex 4096 Jan 16 08:34 Sub-Zero.bundle

#9

Yes i installed it the same way as you mentioned. BUT i dont think that the Sub-Zero plugin will work because of file permissions. For example some directories where i have movies or series, the permissions are:

[mantax@mantax]:(0b)~/media$ ls -l
total 8
drwxrwxr-x 3 mantax mantax 4096 Jan 17 11:57 movies
drwxrwxr-x 2 mantax mantax 4096 Jan 17 11:32 tv

So WRITE access to those folders have only the user mantax or the one who belongs to the group mantax. The permissions for the Sub-Zero plugin are:

[mantax@mantax]:(0b)/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-ins$ ls -l
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 3 plex plex 4096 Jan 15 20:46 Services.bundle
drwxr-xr-x 3 plex plex 4096 Jan 17 11:40 Sub-Zero.bundle
[mantax@mantax]:(0b)/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application

The Sub-Zero plugin belongs to the user plex and to the group plex. The Sub-Zero plugin downloads the Subtitles it finds and TRIES to save them in the same directory as the movies directory. But since the movies directory gives write access ONLY to the user mantax and to the group mantax i suppose that i have to add the user plex to the mantax group? By this way if the user plex is a member of the mantax group (which has write access) when the Sub-Zero plugin is being executed it should have write access to download the subtitles file to the movies or tv directory. Am i correct or am i missing some point here?

Thanks in advance

George

#10

that sounds correct…adding the plex user to the mantax group.

#11

I can confirm that by adding the plex user to the mantax group allowed to the Sub-Zero Plugin to download Subtitles and store them next to the movie file. For everyone who uses Quickbox and uses the Sub-Zero plugin here are some tips from my experience to make the plugin work.

a.) The Library folder (Movies or TV Shows) must have their directory permissions set to 775 for example:

[mantax@mantax]:(0b)~/media$ ls -l
total 8
drwxrwxr-x 5 mantax mantax 4096 Jan 17 22:03 movies
drwxrwxr-x 2 mantax mantax 4096 Jan 17 11:32 tv

b.) The Library folders are being created with the Quickbox user that is being created during the Quickbox setup. In my case this user is called mantax. So all Movie or TV Shows Libraries have as Owner the User mantax and belong to the Group mantax. For making Sub-Zero now to work i needed to add the plex user as a member to the mantax group. Now the plex user being part of the mantax group has write access to the Folders where the movies files are located. This step is needed because the Sub-Zero Plugin belongs to the User plex and to the Group plex. I have done this with the command:

adduser plex mantax

I hope that information helped others to use the Sub-Zero plugin with Plex. Also keep in mind if you automate file downloads with Sonarr or Couchpotato to configure those programs in that way so they create movie Sub folders or Series Sub Folders with 775 permissions.

P.S.: The only problem now that i still have with Plex is that if i delete a movie manually via terminal or with the help of a FTP Programm the Movie Library isnt updating. The movies continue still to exist and are marked as Unavailable. I also did a “Refresh All” & “Empty Trash” but that didnt helped. For some reason Plex is able to recognize movies and add them to the Movie Library but then its not capable of recognizing that a movie has been deleted.

Thanks in advance

George

1 Like
#12

There should be a setting in sub-zero to store the subtitles with plex metadata (where the plugin has write permissions) rather than storing them with your media. This bypassses the need to muck with permissions on an ongoing basis, but has the downside of not saving your subs in the same folder of your media if you move servers.

Conversely, you can do like I do and zip up your plex install and transfer it to your new server if you ever move. All settings, metadata and states will be retained in that event.

#13

Yes you are right, but i prefer for myself to save the downloaded subtitles next to my movie files. As you said there is the option to store the subtitles with plex metadata. Of course in that case you dont need to add the plex user to the custom created user.

Thanks in advance

George