Unable to Get Write Permissions Working for Emby

[tiefling]

I’ve had an Emby server working quite well on my Manjaro system for a while now, apart from some odd behaviour with the backup plugin which I worked around by using a shell script to massage the permissions.

I’m now looking to get write permissions working so I can reduce the database size and move media and metadata alongside my files.

I cannot seem to get Emby to write to anything though.

My media is in various locations, all are set to 777 permissions under me:me user and group. These are all stored on local HDDs - all internal and ext4.

I’ve looked at articles on here that seem related, which talk about Dynamic User’s and Supplementary Groups - This is really confusing - particularly as I couldn’t initially find the service in systemd.

Permissions for emby media server

Hi. I’m trying to setup emby on my computer and am getting an error that emby requires write access to a directory, however: $ ls -l /home/emby/Library/ total 8 drwxrwxr-x 2 emby emby 4096 Sep 3 18:39 DVR drwxrwxr-x 2 emby emby 4096 Sep 3 18:41 Movies I’m getting the error when setting up the DVR function and directory. I found this:wiki-archlinux-org/index.php/Emby ============== Write Permissions Emby runs under the user and user group emby using systemd’s DynamicUser feature. By …

Permissions look right, but Emby says it can't write to directory

The permissions look right for the temp directory below, but when I tell Emby to use it as its server cache path it says, “Emby Server requires write access to this folder. Please ensure write access and try again.” drwxrwsr-x 2 emby media 4096 Jun 11 07:48 temp The Emby service runs with user emby and group media, so I’m puzzled as to why Emby can’t write to the temp directory. emby-server.service: [Unit] Description=Emby brings together your videos, music, photos, and live television . …

I’m using the emby-server package from the Official repositories.

My installation is located in var/lib/emby

I have followed the instructions in the first post link but have had no success. I created the write-permissions.conf as follows:

[Service]
SupplementaryGroups=shared
ReadWritePaths= /files/Video/Movies /files/Video/TV

I then chownd my Movies directory as an initial test from me:me to me:shared using sudo chown -R me:shared *

I have been referencing the following Arch Wiki article for guidance: Emby - ArchWiki

I’m a bit confused as to the relevant emby-server.service file - I’ve located ones at the following locations, but I’m assuming the third one is the one that’s actually relevant:

/run/systemd/propagate/emby-server.service
/etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/emby-server.service
/usr/lib/systemd/emby-server.service

This gives me this content:

[Unit]
Description=Emby brings together your videos, music, photos, and live television.
After=network.target

[Service]
User=emby
Group=emby
SupplementaryGroups=render
SupplementaryGroups=video
DynamicUser=true
StateDirectory=emby
ReadWritePaths=-/dev/dri

EnvironmentFile=/etc/conf.d/emby-server
ExecStart=/usr/bin/emby-server
RestartForceExitStatus=3

AmbientCapabilities=
CapabilityBoundingSet=
LockPersonality=true
ProtectControlGroups=true
ProtectKernelModules=true
ProtectKernelTunables=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

[tiefling]

The syntax for the .conf file was not what I was expecting. My final change was to do this:

[Service]
SupplementaryGroups=shared
ReadWritePaths=/files/Video/Movies
ReadWritePaths=/files/Video/TV
UMask=0002

I think that having seperate repeated entries for SupplementaryGroups and ReadWritePaths was the problem - This isn’t noted in the Arch Wiki article or anywhere else as all the examples use a single directory path.

FOR MORE INFO

I found that either using setfacl or chmod g+s for getting parent directory permissions setting was a lost cause. Others may have better mileage, but in the end I just folded and linked the service up to my own group as well:

[Service]
SupplementaryGroups=shared
SupplementaryGroups=me
ReadWritePaths=/files/Video/Movies
ReadWritePaths=/files/Video/TV
UMask=0002

Probably NOT the best option security wise, but by this point it seemed the only option that wouldn’t necessitate me messing about setting permissions every time I added something new to the media folder.