Cannot find NAS drive in Plex app

[TheGodMiklos]

I installed Plex on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ running 2018-11-13-raspbian-stretch-full and am trying to access my WD MyCloud EX2 by browsing for it under 'add a folder' in the Plex web browser app. I can find it in File Manager under Go>Network but Plex isn't giving me the option to do that and it's not showing up anywhere else. I tried to mount it to the Pi>Home folder by editing the fstab file as I saw in some tutorials but whenever I try to save it gives me an error message, plus I'm not sure if I edited it properly either. I did make a copy of the unaltered fstab file in case something goes wrong. I also tried pasting the filepath to the Movies folder on my cloud drive into Plex from File Manager but it's still not finding anything to build a library with. I'm including screenshots of the fstab file I was trying to edit with the error message I was getting, the folders that Plex is letting me see to browse through and the top folder on the cloud drive in File Manager. I feel like I'm almost there and if someone could help me with this persistently annoying problem I would greatly appreciate it.

[DarrenHill]

I don't think Plex can work with networked drives, only local ones.

At least when I've set up my server in the past (on a Pi3 via docker) it's never been able to access anything shared across the network, but works fine with anything local on the USB ports.

Perfectly willing (and indeed happy) to be proven wrong by anyone who has actually managed this, but from personal experience I don't think it's possible to do.

[Roken]

1: Why are you mounting the drive to /home? /home is required otherwise for local (i.e. user) config files

Create a mount point in /mnt

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sudo mkdir /mnt/media

Then change the owner

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sudo chown pi /mnt/media

Then edit fstab to mount the drive at the new mount point

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sudo nano /etc/fstab

Replace nano with your preferred text editor (personally, I prefer vim, but nano is pre-installed)

Then you can mount without rebooting (also helps with troubleshooting the fstab entry)

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sudo mount -a

All that done, the nfs drive should appear as a local drive and be accessible from plex. For help, on my plex server (a separate pi mounting media from an NFS drive connected to a different pi) I have

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192.168.1.160:/mnt/NFS	/mnt/media	nfs	vers=4,nofail	0	0

Note that this is just an example, and you will have to adjust both the source address and the mount point to suit your own setup.

[TheGodMiklos]

That's where I was having trouble. It kept giving me an error message when I tried to save the fstab file and I'm not exactly sure what to type and where to put it in the fstab document.

[DarrenHill]

From your screenshot you're using afp (apple file sharing) as the protocol?

Is there any specific reason for this rather than using NFS or SMB? I think the EX2 supports both of those (I have both types of shares on my WD MyCloudMirror, which is basically the same device with a few tweaks as the EX2). SMB sharing is the standard way, but you can enable NFS sharing as well for individual shares under the NAS dashboard entry for each of the shares.

Also from the same screenshot you seem to have added the entry at the end of a comment line, so it won't actually do anything at all. Plus the set up of the line anyway looks very wrong, using IP addresses and hostnames, plus including spaces in the target folder name for the mount. All of those will screw things up completely.

The entry should be on its own line, and not preceeded by any hashes (which set the line as being a comment and ignored). There are plenty of tutorials on the web for setting up fstab which give examples, plus the good information posted above as well of course.

That should enable the shares to be set up to the Pi, but as I said before whether Plex can actually use them is another matter (on mine it couldn't, the mount point doesn't show in the browse window in Plex and adding it manually doesn't work, although it's perfectly navigable at the command line).

[TheGodMiklos]

It's still giving me an error message when I try to add the new line in Text Editor. I tried doing it through a terminal, Roken, but I can't figure out how to save it when working through there. I'm posting a screenshot of the line I'm trying to add in the Terminal window and the File Manager shown is open to the folder where it would find the media on my NAS drive. I'm fairly new to Linux and coding, and I still can't tell if I wrote the automount line in the fstab file properly or not. I tried logging in as the root user with Nautilus and that didn't seem to work right even after changing the Unix password to something I remembered. Is Text Editor throwing me the same error message as in my previous screenshot because I'm not logged in as the root user?

[DarrenHill]

How are you editting the file? As it's a root owned one you need to use "sudo nano /etc/fstab" to give you temporary privs to do the edit, rather than just "nano /etc/fstab" which won't be able to save as your normal user can't write to /etc.

For reference, this is the fstab line I'm using to mount my WD MyCloudMirror (Elements_2 is the name of the MCM share and my Pi didn't like the vers tag for some reason):

192.168.0.201:/nfs/Elements_2 /mnt/Elements2 nfs nofail 0 0

It's working under the command line, but browsing for it to add within the Plex server running in a docker container doesn't show it (the mnt folder just appears to be empty, and entering it manually doesn't work as nothing appears in the library after Plex tries to scan).

You also need to make sure that you've got NFS sharing active on your EX2 - you can do that in the share's entry in the EX2's web dashboard. Your screenshots show your access as via AFP at the moment. From that screen it should also give you the access URL for the NFS share (at least my MCM does that so your EX2 probably will as well).

[TheGodMiklos]

Alright, I enabled NFS and copied the address it gave but I still don't think I'm writing my line quite right. Also I tried using something called Gnome Disk which seemed to make it easier to edit the Fstab file. I'm trying to mount it to mnt/media and nfs://192.168.0.101/nfs/NFS is what my EX2 gave me as the NFS path. I keep getting an error message when I try to run it in a terminal though. If you guys could help with this last bit I think it will work and then I'll know what to do next time.

[TheGodMiklos]

defaults,noatime,x-gvfs-show nfs://192.168.0.101/nfs/NFS /mnt/media nfs nofail 0 0

Also, this is the complete line that you can't see in Gnome.

[DarrenHill]

Try this as the line in your fstab:

192.168.0.101:/nfs/NFS /mnt/media nfs defaults,noatime,x-gvfs-show,nofail 0 0

and if that doesn't work simply

192.168.0.101:/nfs/NFS /mnt/media nfs nofail 0 0

That's based on the mount I set up between my Pi and my MyCloudMirror, which works fine (at the command line level - Plex can't see it as I said above).

[TheGodMiklos]

Yeah, I tried those two lines separately and was still getting the same error message in a terminal. Then I tried to reboot and it's taking me to a screen that says 'Welcome to the Raspberry Pi Desktop' with a terminal line on the left side, so I guess I screwed up the fstab file and now it won't boot properly. Is there a better way to run a media server through a Pi box than Plex? I have a separate one I loaded with Kodi that picked up my EX2 drive without much ado, but it wouldn't scrape properly. It seemed like a good chunk of my movies weren't showing up and out of all my TV shows only one or two appeared under the appropriate tab. I got two Pi 3B+ for Christmas and I wanted to entirely remove Plex from my PC tower to one of these so it won't knock me off of a movie while I'm trying to use Illustrator or something. This is turning out to be a lot more frustrating than I thought it would be. I didn't have much installed to the 32 GB card on my Linux box so reflashing the card and redoing my settings isn't a huge deal but if you know a better way to start over I'm certainly open to suggestions.

[DarrenHill]

If you're using Kodi as your front-end then basically you just need a NAS/file server set-up as the back-end to supply the media. Either your existing one or one you can set up on your Pi (something like OpenMediaVault, or even just under Raspbian - there are numerous tutorials on the net for Pi-based NAS set-ups).

Scraping issues in Kodi are normally down to incorrect naming of the media file compared to their entry in the scraper database, or incorrectly set up file/folder structures. See the link below for more details on that:

https://kodi.wiki/view/Naming_video_files

The fstab set-up above is based on the one I'm using, so I'm surprised it doesn't work for you as your NAS isn't so different to mine.

But if you're open to using Kodi/NAS rather than Plex client/server then we can perhaps guide you there instead. Oh and just for full disclosure - I'm a Team Kodi member and forum mod.

[TheGodMiklos]

Well, I appreciate your help. I'm fairly proficient with Windows but I've only been messing around with Linux for two or three months. As far as this fstab issue goes, I'm just throwing my hands up and trying Kodi again. Is there a certain naming/folder structure I should use to get Kodi to scrape properly? Can I pipe the Kodi box to my tower with VNC Viewer so I can take screenshots?

[TheGodMiklos]

I'm going to try Sickbeard after work tonight. It looks like I can reorganize my library with that through Windows, so I'll let you know how it ends up.

[DarrenHill]

If you look at the wiki link in my post above it gives details of how to set up your Kodi library for both TV shows and movies.

The first key point is not to mix types (movies, TV shows etc) in one tree, and to set the type correctly when you define the source.

Basically the movies should have the same name as their entry in the scraper database (www.themoviedb.org as standard), and can either be in their own individual folders (recommended, so you can include additional stuff like posters and artwork if you wish) or grouped together.

TV shows need to be in individual folders per show (naming as defined by the scraper database, by default www.thetvdb.com), and episodes named in the SxxExx format for seasons and episodes. By default Kodi will assume the folder level below the root of the source will contain individual shows, although this can be changed if needed.

Kodi can be used with VNC, but you need to use direct capture mode due to how it sets up its display. If you're using an all-in-one set-up like LibreElec, there's a VNC server add-on in their repo which works fine.

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=320173

[TheGodMiklos]

Alright, I've built a library with MediaElch on my PC tower. How do I export that to my Kodi device?

[DarrenHill]

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=136333

https://www.kvibes.de/mediaelch/

Those threads may help you.

It's not something I've personally used, but I think it creates .nfo files which you should have beside the media files and that Kodi will then see and inhale rather than needing to use scrapers.