# Beets with Plex?

**URL:** <https://discourse.beets.io/t/beets-with-plex/1039>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [December 16, 2019, 8:18pm UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/beets-with-plex/1039 "2019-12-16T20:18:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rlongfield](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/rlongfield/32/329_2.png) [@rlongfield](https://discourse.beets.io/u/rlongfield)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 8:18pm UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/beets-with-plex/1039/1 "2019-12-16T20:18:18Z")

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Ugh

So a while back I was convinced by a friend to install Plex. My experience has been less than the Awesomeness promised by said “friend”. In fact we hit a new low when our last-mile connection was taken down after a storm for repairs, Plex desktop could connect to the cloud to verify the account to connect to the server in the basement…

So as part of the re-think of my house media I am looking to get my music organized and found beets.  
Got beets installed, did a basic config file as per the Getting Started Doc and then I ran into:

> could not list directory /Media/Music/MeatLoaf-Very Best Of/CD 1/CD 1: Permission denied  
> and  
> unreadable file: /Media/Music/Once - Music From The Motion Picture/12 Glen Hansard and Marke?ta Irglova? - Once.mp3

Now I am pretty sure this is from the incredibly crappy permission settings required by Plex, but I’m a bit worried it’s far more sinister in that /Media/Music reside on a different server… My user has full permissions on that share but I’ve run into something like that before.

Please tell me it’s just Plex…

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**Author:** ![adrian](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/adrian/32/4_2.png) [@adrian](https://discourse.beets.io/u/adrian)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2019, 9:09pm UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/beets-with-plex/1039/2 "2019-12-16T21:09:41Z")

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It does indeed look like there is some permissions wonkiness going on. Can you verify that you have the permissions you think you have in these ways?

- `ls -ld '/Media/Music/MeatLoaf-Very Best Of/CD 1/CD 1'`
- `ls '/Media/Music/MeatLoaf-Very Best Of/CD 1/CD 1'`
- `touch '/Media/Music/MeatLoaf-Very Best Of/CD 1/CD 1/foo.txt'`

Then you can delete that `foo.txt`, if it gets successfully created.

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**Author:** ![rlongfield](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/rlongfield/32/329_2.png) [@rlongfield](https://discourse.beets.io/u/rlongfield)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2019, 2:01am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/beets-with-plex/1039/3 "2019-12-17T02:01:01Z")

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@adrian

here are the results of what you asked for:

> ls -ld /Media/Music/MeatLoaf-Very\ Best\ Of/CD\ 1/CD\ 1/  
> drw-r–r–+ 2 bert www-data 0 Jun 15 2010 /Media/Music/MeatLoaf-Very Best Of/CD 1/CD 1/

> ls /Media/Music/MeatLoaf-Very\ Best\ Of/CD\ 1/CD\ 1/  
> ls: reading directory ‘/Media/Music/MeatLoaf-Very Best Of/CD 1/CD 1/’: Permission denied

> touch /Media/Music/MeatLoaf-Very\ Best\ Of/CD\ 1/CD\ 1/foo.txt  
> touch: cannot touch ‘/Media/Music/MeatLoaf-Very Best Of/CD 1/CD 1/foo.txt’: Permission denied

I’m a bit confused how my user has rw permissions on the directory yet I can’t read or write to it.

My smb.conf file has my user listed as the valid user, and writable is set to ‘yes’.

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**Author:** ![adrian](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/adrian/32/4_2.png) [@adrian](https://discourse.beets.io/u/adrian)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2019, 2:14am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/beets-with-plex/1039/4 "2019-12-17T02:14:30Z")

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You will need the “execute” bit enabled to read directories. 🙂 Sounds like that smb.conf might need additional fiddling?

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**Author:** ![rlongfield](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/rlongfield/32/329_2.png) [@rlongfield](https://discourse.beets.io/u/rlongfield)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2019, 2:31am UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/beets-with-plex/1039/5 "2019-12-17T02:31:54Z")

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@adrian  
ah, I missed that, Thanks!  
Nope not the smb.conf file but me chmodding the directories so Plex would work. 664 for directories and 755 for files or some such nonsense

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**Author:** ![anotherhowie](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.beets.io/anotherhowie/32/215_2.png) [@anotherhowie](https://discourse.beets.io/u/anotherhowie)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2020, 1:12pm UTC](https://discourse.beets.io/t/beets-with-plex/1039/6 "2020-01-05T13:12:36Z")

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Hopefully the other way around (755 for directories and 644 for files)!

The 7 vs 6, 5 vs 4 is the execute permission needed to access files inside the directory.