OBS Studio (obs-studio) Limited Recorder File Path Access

Hello,

This is my first posting, so hopefully this is the proper place to ask this question.

I’m going a bit crazy with OBS Studio. Selecting Settings->Output->Recording Path (Click BROWSE) does not let me select a lot of my folders. Even when giving FULL access and ownership to certain folders, I can’t view it.

In fact, even running OBS Studio under root privilege, I still can’t access some folders despite giving FULL access to a given folder.

Why is it that the File Dialog accessed from OBS Studio can not see a lot of the folders despite the folders having full permission for OBS Studio to see it? I am at a loss.

Welcome to the forum! :slight_smile:

Are those “folders” by any chance located on an ntfs filesystem? If so, then you need to approach that differently to if they were on a Linux-native filesystem.

  • GNU/Linux is a UNIX/POSIX operating system, which stores information about file ownership and permissions in the inode ─ effectively, the blocks/extents making up for the file itself.

  • Microsoft Windows is an entirely different operating system design with a lot of legacy from MS-DOS (and CP/M before it), and the ntfs filesystem does not recognize or store POSIX file ownership and permissions. By consequence, this information has to be emulated ─ i.e. faked ─ in the Linux kernel’s virtual filesystem layer when the filesystem is mounted, and is then applied to everything on the filesystem as a whole, not on an individual-file-basis, nor are the permissions and ownership saved when the filesystem is unmounted, and you can also not alter the emulated permissions in real-time while the filesystem is mounted. The same is true for msdos (FAT12/16) and vfat (FAT32) filesystems, by the way.

In addition to the above, if you have Windows Fast Boot enabled, then Windows does not completely shut down its filesystems, and if you then boot into GNU/Linux, then the kernel will regard those ntfs volumes as potentially damaged, and will mount them as read-only so as to prevent further corruption.

Lastly, UNIX operating systems don’t approach storage as volumes, as Windows does, but instead via a uniform directory tree that will always largely look the same, and unlike in Windows, an unprivileged user does not have write access outside their home directory.

So if a volume ─ any volume, even a native one ─ is mounted anywhere else than under your home directory, /tmp, /var/tmp or /run, then it’ll be writable to the root account only. Add this to the fact that the permissions on ntfs volumes have to be faked and are statically set at mount time, and you can see how this can sometimes will often lead to unexpected results for newbies coming from the Windows world.

Now, you have not given us any information about your system and where those files are located in the directory tree, so this is as far as my reply goes. If you want more information, then please tell us…

  • the path to those files ─ where in the tree do they sit; and…
  • what filesystem(s) they are on.

Thank you Aragorn!

I appreciate your response. I’m using the Linux-native system.

I’m running the latest Manjaro KDE Plasma with a ext4 file system. OBS Studio running on Linux.

For example of giving full access:

chmod a+rwx /srv

It won’t let me upload links, so I will try it this way…

Here’s my view of /srv from OBS Studio:
ht tps://ibb.co/QfCZCpd

View of /srv from Dolphin:
ht tps://ibb.co/9rYVCVY

Why can’t I see the folders in OBS Studio?

Go back to @Aragorn’s reply and check where that /srv folder sits in your tree.

What happens when you click on the Choose button at the bottom of that OBS dialog window?

I’m using the SNAP version of OBS Studio.

If you are under the /srv folder with the OBS File Dialog, there’s no folders to see. Therefore, there is no Folder you could “Choose”. See prior screen shot links.

Answering muvvenby, yes /srv sits in the tree. It’s not a removable media path or anything like that.

If you are running Manjaro, you should see under your own environment that /srv exists.

Why the folder view between Dolphine and OBS Studio differ is beyond me. I would think that if I can see the folders in Dolphine, then I should be able to see them in the OBS Studio File Dialog too.

Why OBS Studio seems to have limited file/folder access, is unknown to me. But that’s what it seems so far.

If you force it, by simply entering a valid folder path manually in OBS Studio, like /srv/samba:
ht tps://ibb.co/02dSGsG

You get the following error message:
ht tps://ibb.co/k1b7CNs

I’m at a loss still.

As far as I know, snaps are confined. So you won’t be able to choose any folders, that are not specified as targets by the people that build the snap.

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You should have stated this up front. As @Strit noted, Snaps are containerized ─ they more or less run chrooted.

You’ll probably have better luck with the version in the official Manjaro repository.

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Thanks for the response Strit. :slightly_smiling_face:

Confined?!? :open_mouth:

I would not have naturally thought the SNAP version of OBS Studio would be confined. Why is this?

If so, then that would explain my limited access which is a huge disappointment! And then it’s a question of what to do about that? This means I must run a non SNAP version of OBS Studio to not have this limitation?

I’m surprised by the restriction, but will try to look into this more. :thinking:

All Snap software is containerized. This is because Snap is intended to allow applications to be bundled together with their own versions of shared libraries, so that the applications don’t have to use the system-wide versions of those libraries, which in turn could cause version incompatibilities.

I had no idea Aragorn that it made a difference. I thought SNAP was just another convenient way to install a package. New to Manjaro, I’m new to SNAP and was unaware that snap containerizes things with such restrictions. I will look further into this of course.

This answers why I can’t access the other folders as it must be due to security restrictions.

That seems like a convenience of Snap. But, I didn’t realize that such would also have limited file path access as well. It didn’t naturally occur to me is all. :slightly_smiling_face:

I am very grateful for your support and help on this! I’m grateful for Strit’s help as well! :smiley:

Now that I’m not banging my head against the wall with confusion as to why I can’t access a given folder, I’ll look into better understanding SNAP. And since there is such a restriction, I suppose I’ll have to figure out what to do? I guess try to install OBS Studio the regular way outside of using SNAP.

Again, thank you both for all your time and help! :+1: :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes

Strit and Aragorn, here’s an alternative that seems to work now that I understand the problem

mount --bind /srv/ftp/obs-studio/ /home/jason/Desktop/obs-studio/

Although I can’t seem to view the files in “/home/jason/Desktop/obs-studio/” for whatever reason, it does allow OBS Studio to write to “/srv/ftp/obs-studio/”. In other words, OBS Studio writes to “/home/jason/Desktop/obs-studio” effectively writes to “/srv/ftp/obs-studio”

This is a temporary solution that will work for me for now to make things useful. But, again, I’ll look into this more too overall.

:smiley:

I’m glad I’ve made some new friends :slightly_smiling_face:

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