0

I'm working through setting up a media server running Debian 1.2.0 on a VM with ESXi. I've installed Debian and also installed Plex. The media is on a Netgear ReadyNAS102 and needs to be accessed through the NAS.

My Plex folder is currently located at NetgearNAS>Plex
Name of my NAS is ManiaNAS
NAS is located at 192.168.0.101 (static ip)
cifs-utils is version (2:6.11-3.1) - latest

Now, while I can navigate in Debian to my Plex folder and see its contents, I cannot get Plex to see the same folder. After digging deeper into this, I understood that Plex cannot access network folders and the way around this is to mount the network folder within the local file system. I followed the advice here at the link below to the T but hasn't helped:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/345087/how-do-i-add-a-network-drive-to-plex

I opened up fstab and updated it to include a line as follows:
//ManiaNAS/Plex /media/Plex cifs guest 0 0

Now when I go back to the Terminal and try sudo mount -a, I get this error:
Could not resolve address for [name of NAS]: Unknown error

This is where I am stuck. I thought of trying something else when I noticed the path I got while hovering over my Plex folder in Files. The path was [smb://ManiaNAS.local/plex/]. So I entered this instead into fstab and got this error:
Mounting cifs url not implemented yet. Attempt to mount smb://manianas.local/Plex/

I tried mounting with write permission as well but just got an error that said:
Parse error at line 16 (which is where the fstab entry is).

My issues/questions:

1) Can I use //ManiaNAS/Plex in fstab or should I use //192.168.0.101/Plex? I know I should use //192.168.0.101/Plex

2) I can navigate to a web interface of my Netgear ReadyNas when I go to 192.168.0.101 but I cannot navigate to the Plex folder directly by entering in 192.168.0.101/Plex -- not sure what to do here. Not an issue as I can access the Plex folder by typing in //192.168.0.101/Plex

  1. What should my fstab entry be?

In Terminal, I tried this:
mount 192.168.0.101/Plex /media/Plex
That gave me this error: mount: /media/Plex: must be superuser to use mount.

Trying with sudo sudo mount -t cifs //192.168.0.101/Plex /media/Plex and I was asked for this: Password for root@//192.168.0.101/Plex: and I entered in the admin password for the NAS.
I then got this error: mount error(13): Permission denied. Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount .cifs) and kernel log messages (dmesg).

I have ReadyNAS OS 6+ and according to Netgear (https://kb.netgear.com/30068/ReadyNAS-OS-6-SSH-access-support-and-configuration-guides) the root password is the same as the admin password. I also checked the ReadyNAS users page and there is only an admin user.

Netgear suggested trying 'password' as the root password but that returned this message from sudo: Sorry, try again. This led me to believe that I am not entering an incorrect password.

I googled the earlier error that I got mount error(13): Permission denied. Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount .cifs) and kernel log messages (dmesg) and came across this page link and tried it out. The site said to use this (modified for my use case) but it did not work:

sudo mount -t cifs //192.168.0.101/Plex /mount/Plex/ -o vers=3.0,username=<username>,password=<password>,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0777,serverino,sec=ntlmssp

I then removed items that I didn't think had anything to do with the mount command and ended up at this which seemed to work!

sudo mount -t cifs //192.168.0.101/Plex /mount/Plex/ -o,username=<admin username>,password=<admin password>,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0777,sec=ntlmssp

I see the mounted folder!

Wondering 2 things:
what does -o mean? Understood it just means options.
Is there a better way to do this without exposing my admin password? Yes and no from what I can tell. Yes you can have the login credentials be referred to on a different file but no in the sense that the different file is still storing plain text passwords. Granted one would need admin access to view and modify that different file. So there is a level of risk involved. I decided to create a separate user on my NAS. That user will only have access to the Plex folder.

This has all been a huge learning exercise for me and I'm very appreciative of the guidance I've been receiving!

I'm gonna keep this link for reference once I figure out mounting: Debian server, auto-mount Samba share

snkrd
  • 1
  • 2
  • Can you mount the SMB share manually from the Debian machine using the IP address? If not, add any error messages that you receive to the question. – Nasir Riley May 23 '22 at 00:22
  • Thank you for your guidance @NasirRiley. I just tried //192.168.0.101/Plex and it worked in Firefox in my Debian VM. Could have sworn that did not work before. Or maybe it was that it did not have the "//" in the address. So now I added this to fstab: '//192.168.0.101/Plex /media/Plex nfs rw,hard,intr 0 0' and got this error message: mount: media/Plex: bad option; for several filesystems (eg. nfs, cifs) you might need a /sbin/mount. Edit: deleted and re-added comment to remove ambiguity. – snkrd May 23 '22 at 00:45
  • In Terminal, I tried this: `mount 192.168.0.101/Plex /media/Plex` That gave me the below error: _mount: /media/Plex: must be superuser to use mount._ – snkrd May 23 '22 at 00:52
  • There is no need to post it in the comments as you've already added it to the question. That message means that you need to mount it either by prepending `sudo` to the command or using a root shell. First you need to `apt install cifs-utils` and then `sudo mount -t cifs //192.168.0.101/Plex /media/Plex`. Or open a root shell and `mount -t cifs //192.168.0.101/Plex /media/Plex`. – Nasir Riley May 23 '22 at 01:51
  • I already have the latest version of cifs utils installed so we're good there. – snkrd May 23 '22 at 02:57
  • I tried `sudo mount -t cifs //192.168.0.101/Plex /media/Plex` and I was asked for this: _Password for root@//192.168.0.101/Plex:_ and I entered in the password for the admin password for the NAS (there is no other password for my NAS). I then got this error _mount error(13): Permission denied. Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount .cifs) and kernel log messages (dmesg)._ – snkrd May 23 '22 at 03:02
  • It's not the admin password for the NAS. It's the password for root on the NAS. – Nasir Riley May 23 '22 at 12:55
  • I have ReadyNAS OS 6+ and according to Netgear (https://kb.netgear.com/30068/ReadyNAS-OS-6-SSH-access-support-and-configuration-guides) the root password is the same as the admin password. I also checked the ReadyNAS users page and there is only an admin user. Netgear suggested trying 'password' as the root password but that returned this message from sudo: _Sorry, try again._ This leads me to believe that I am not entering an incorrect password. Thoughts? – snkrd May 23 '22 at 15:05
  • Hi @NasirRiley, wondering if you can assist with what my fstab entry should be? Looks like I can manually mount just fine using this `sudo mount -t cifs //192.168.0.101/Plex /mount/Plex/ -o,username=,password=,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0777,sec=ntlmssp` – snkrd May 24 '22 at 15:32
  • welcome to U&L, please don't post answer in the question, just answer your own question. – Archemar May 25 '22 at 11:51
  • apologies, thought it would help someone else to have everything in one place. I will stop editing my original post with answers. – snkrd May 25 '22 at 14:33

0 Answers0