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Last active February 11, 2025 23:58
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Troubleshooting issues with TrueNAS and Plex: Unable to select target directory for Plex streaming, `Type*` fields disabled, etc.
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troubleshooting_truenas_plex.md

Troubleshooting TrueNAS with Plex

The Issue

  • I have a TrueNAS Scale machine that I'm trying to get set up with Plex, but I can't seem to get Plex to share the directory where my media files will be stored
  • The problem is that the Type* dropdown fields for Plex Data Storage, and Plex Configuration Storage, are disabled, and I'm not sure what I need to do to enable them
  • The vast majority of instructions I've found online dealing with this appear to be using an older version of both TrueNAS and Plex, so none of the settings or directions seem to apply to my situation

Resources:

  • Previous TrueNAS post on which I asked OP for help as they were able to overcome the same issue. (Their settings were different than mine so I couldn't use their solution)

Specifications

DamienX (NAS Machine)

Damien3 (Main Machine)

  • TrueNAS is connected through SMB to Damien3
  • Currently, all of the media files I wish to store on the NAS are on Damien3
  • After connecting to the NAS from Damien3, I put a single movie in the Movies folder from/on Damien3 to test the connection between TrueNAS and Damien3, and to see if the directory and movie would show on the NAS, and you'll note that the Movies directory doesn't show up under the media directory in the datasets
  • Directory tree of TRUENAS connection on Damien3:

DISCLAIMER: I own the movie seen in the directory tree below. The digital copy of the movie was obtained legally from my physical copy, and I do not condone or support piracy in any form.

📂 \\Truenas\qbt\
┣━━ 📂 media
┃   ┣━━ 📂 delme
┃   ┗━━ 📂 Movies
┃       ┗━━ 📂 Fear (1996)
┃           ┗━━ 📂 [link file://\\Truenas\qbt\media\Movies\Fear (1996)\Fear (1996) [BluRay] [720p] [YTS.AM]]Fear (1996) 
┃               [BluRay] [720p] [YTS.AM]
┃               ┣━━ 📄 Fear.1996.720p.BluRay.x264-[YTS.AM].mp4 (865.2 MB)
┃               ┗━━ 🖼️ www.YTS.AM.jpg (58.1 kB)
┗━━ 📂 plex_config

What the NAS will be used for, or Needs:

  • Primarily:
    • Running Nord VPN (Not Installed Yet)
    • Running QBittorent (Not Installed Yet)
    • Running a Local Plex Server (Installed)
  • Additionally:
    • Storing and serving files to other computers on the network
    • Running a local web server to:
      1. Test web applications I'm developing
      2. Run a few web applications (dev only not in prod) that I use regularly

Additional Software/Application Needs:

  • Jackett (Torrent search indexer)
  • Jackett Solverr (Cloudflare solver)

TrueNAS Scale Specifications:

  • OS Version: TrueNAS-SCALE-23.10.2 Updated to TrueNAS-SCALE-24.10 on 2025/02/07
  • Model:AMD FX(tm)-8350 Eight-Core Processor
  • Train: TrueNAS-SCALE-Bluefin - TrueNAS SCALE Bluefin [release] Updated to TrueNAS-SCALE-ElectricEel - TrueNAS SCALE ElectricEel 24.10 [release] on 2025/02/07
  • Memory:7.5 GiB
  • Storage:
    • Name: main
    • Pool Status: ONLINE
    • Used Space: 0%
    • Disks with Errors: 0
    • Last Scrub: Never
    • Free Space: 7.14 TiB
    • Total Disks: 1
    • Data: 1 vdev
    • Caches: 0
    • Spares: 0

Directory Tree of TrueNAS datasets:

📂 main (5.96 GiB / 7.13 TiB)
┣━━ 📂 ix-applications (2.85 GiB / 7.13 TiB)
┗━━ 📂 QBT (825.26 MiB / 7.13 TiB)
    ┣━━ 📂 media (823.87 MiB / 7.13 TiB)
    ┃   ┗━━ 📂 delme (96 KiB / 7.13 TiB)
    ┗━━ 📂 plex_config (1.28 MiB / 7.13 TiB)
Plex Settings
  • Here you can see that the 'Type*' dropdown fields for Plex Data Storage, and Plex Configuration Storage, are disabled. I have tried enabling ACL to see if that would enable them, but to no avail
  • I've also tried every other configuration will respect to the ID Type, ID, and, Access values I could find online, but nothing seems to work

Plex Settings

Datasets
  • The media dataset is the one where all the media files will be stored, and the one I need Plex to have access to
  • plex_config was created following a tutorial and contains nothing at the moment
  • delme is just a test folder

Plex Settings

Permissions
  • Here are the permissions for the QBT Dataset
  • I understand that these permissions make this severely insecure, but this is just me giving every permission I can think of to try to allow Plex to access the media dataset. I certainly plan on removing unnecessary permissions one by one once I get this working
  • Though it doesn't show it, these permissions are applied recursively

QBT Permissions

Additional Information

  • It should be stated that TrueNAS specified that it is required to have two storage drives of equal size for redundancy purposes, but the SSD was quite expensive, and I cannot afford to buy another one at the moment. I don't remember where, but I received information that I could still set this up without the second drive, if you believe this to be incorrect, and that this could be the cause of any issue, please let me know
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