How should I manage library permissions on Ubuntu (24.04)

[ambrose]

I have JellyFin running on Ubuntu 24.04.

I access my libraries on that box via FTP and I upload my files and create new directories on that box with an FTP client.

But the files/directories have a permission problem and JellyFin can't see them.

When I use my FTP client to create a directory, I'm logged in as myself so the directory is owned by the ambrose user, not by JellyFin.

I can solve this problem by changing permissions in the client to 777 which doesn't feel great, and also by logging in on the command line and changing ownership so the directory belongs to the jellyfin user. I could create a group and every time I create a folder, change its group ownership.

All of those feel like way too much work. Plex runs as root which again isn't great but it means it doesn't have any permission issues.

What should I do? Can I get the jellyfin user's password and FTP to my server using that account?

[TheDreadPirate]

The jellyfin user does not have a shell with which to log in to for the purposes of file transfer.  What you've described, changing the ownership to jellyfin is the simplest solution.  But I also found this annoying and used the process below.

You can set sticky bits to ensure that the jellyfin user has, at least, read access.  This is what I do.  My user owns the library, the jellyfin user has read access via setting the group for the library to jellyfin.  Setting a sticky bit on the group will ensure that all newly created files and folders in your library have the group ownership set to jellyfin.  An example is below.  Notice the "s" in the group permissions.  That indicates there is a sticky bit.  All files and folders created in this directory inherit the sticky bit and ownership.

Code:

chris@rat-trap:/media/library$ ll -d /media/library
drwxr-sr-x 22 chris jellyfin 22 Apr  3 09:13 /media/library/
chris@rat-trap:/media/library$ mkdir test
chris@rat-trap:/media/library$ ll -d test/
drwxrwsr-x 2 chris jellyfin 2 Apr  3 09:13 test/
chris@rat-trap:/media/library$ cd test/
chris@rat-trap:/media/library/test$ touch testFile
chris@rat-trap:/media/library/test$ ll
total 34
drwxrwsr-x  2 chris jellyfin  3 Apr  3 09:14 ./
drwxr-sr-x 23 chris jellyfin 23 Apr  3 09:13 ../
-rw-rw-r--  1 chris jellyfin  0 Apr  3 09:14 testFile

The exception being if you copy files from outside your library, but are already on your server, and you use the -p option to preserve the file's/folder's permissions and ownership.  If you copy without the -p option, it should inherit the sticky bit and ownership.

Files transferred with FTP should be considered "new" files and should inherit the sticky bit and ownership.

Use this command to recursively set permissions and the sticky bit.  Replace the username with your user and the path for your library path.  You should only need to do this once.  Going forward, assuming you don't copy in files or folders with -p, jellyfin should be able read anything you transfer in here without having to change ownership or permissions.

Code:

sudo chown -R chris:jellyfin /media/library
sudo chmod -R 750 /media/library
sudo chmod -R g+s /media/library
sudo find /media/library -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;

If jellyfin needs write access to your library, change 750 to 770 and 640 and 660.

[ambrose]

Hi, thanks so much for all that detail!

I think I have it all sorted thanks to that.

Just to be clear for others, at some point prior to the above, you created a group called jellyfin and added the jellyfin user to it?

[TheDreadPirate]

The Jellyfin group is automatically created when you install Jellyfin and the Jellyfin user is the only user in that group by default. Assuming you are installing Jellyfin directly on Linux and not using Docker.