SOLVED: (Ubuntu) user permissions

[mjpatey]

I'm running Jellyfin Server on Ubuntu 24.04 with my media files on an external exFAT hard drive, mounted in /media/Media. Jellyfin can see the files, navigate through them, and write new files to the drive.

But I can't copy a new media file to the drive myself, so I need to set up the proper permissions. If I do this:

Code:

chmod -r 750 "/media/Media"

...will that allow both me and Jellyfin to do what we need? It looks like my Jellyfin installation did create a "jellyfin" user, per this line in /etc/passwd:

Code:

jellyfin:x:122:124:Jellyfin default user,,,:/var/lib/jellyfin:/bin/false

I've never gone this deep into this sort of thing, so thanks for any insight!

EDIT: I have read TheDreadPirate's excellent primer, but I'm still having a hard time wrapping my brain around it. All subfolders of the drive are currently set to:

Code:

drwxr-xr-x

[TheDreadPirate]

exFAT does not support Linux permissions. You have to add "umask=0002" to the fstab options for your exFAT drive. Then reboot or umount/mount.

[mjpatey]

@TheDreadPirate thank you again. I just tried doing that, and rebooted. I'm sure I have something wrong... here's the line with the "umask=0002" added:

Code:

UUID=6646-2F9B /media/Media exfat defaults umask=0002 0 0

I googled a bit to see where it's supposed to go, and it looked like that was the place to put it. Hoping I'm wrong because it's not working yet.

[TheDreadPirate]

Comma separated options.

Code:

UUID=6646-2F9B /media/Media exfat defaults,umask=0002 0 0

[mjpatey]

@TheDreadPirate, made the change but I still can't copy a file onto the drive (even a small one). ls -l returns this for the drive and all subfolders:

drwxrwxr-x

[TheDreadPirate]

Add "noperm" to the end of the options?

UUID=6646-2F9B /media/Media exfat defaults,umask=0002,noperm 0 0

[mjpatey]

@TheDreadPirate that made the drive inaccessible. Error screenshot is below:

   

I could temporarily move all the media to another drive, reformat this drive to another file system format, and move the media back. If I were to do that, what would be the best option in Ubuntu, and is there a good one that would still be readable/writable by Windows and Mac? I thought that was exFAT, but it certainly seems not to be the case for this kind of thing.

[TheDreadPirate]

Yes, if you have the space and you're sticking with Linux, formatting to a Linux compatible FS is ideal. EXT4 is the go-to.

[mjpatey]

@TheDreadPirate I copied all the files to another ExFAT drive and have now reformatted my Media drive as EXT4. It's currently empty. I've added the following line to /etc/fstab, based on the drive's new UUID:

Code:

UUID=d38f8fcf-1a16-4988-8000-bca2b02efb55 /media/Media ext4 defaults 0 0

So far it doesn't allow me to write to the drive; I can't copy a file to it. I haven't gone into Jellyfin yet because I want to make sure it's all working properly first.

In Nautilus, oddly, it shows up simply as "2.0TB Volume" (no name given) but upon hovering, it correctly shows the mount point as /media/Media. In Properties, it shows the following permissions:

Owner: root (can create and delete files)
Group: root (access files)
Others: (access files)

What's the correct permissions setup for Jellyfin and my user to be able to write to the drive, and can you tell me the specific command or fstab line that will do this?

Also, is it a problem that Nautilus isn't displaying the name of the drive in the drive list (just "2.0TB Volume")?

Thank you again for helping me trudge through this.

[TheDreadPirate]

Make sure that you have sufficient permissions to /media/Media. It is probably owned by root with 755 permissions.

Code:

sudo chown yourUser:jellyfin /media/Media
sudo chmod 750 /media/Media