Dietpi: External Drive Permissions issue | "Folder is not writeable by user sonarr"

[acryllect]

Creating a bug report/issue

Required Information

• DietPi version |

G_DIETPI_VERSION_CORE=6
G_DIETPI_VERSION_SUB=28
G_DIETPI_VERSION_RC=0
G_GITBRANCH='master'
G_GITOWNER='MichaIng'

• Distro version | buster
• Kernel version |
  Linux alxepi 4.19.75-v7l+ #1270 SMP Tue Sep 24 18:51:41 BST 2019 armv7l GNU/Linux
• SBC device | RPi 4 Model B (armv7l) or (EG: RPi3)
• Power supply used | The one in the labists starter kit
• SDcard used | SanDisk

Additional Information (if applicable)

• Software title | Sonarr
• Freshly installed
• Can this issue be replicated on a fresh installation of DietPi? Yes, probably
  
• Bug report ID | sed -n 5p /DietPi/dietpi/.hw_model

Steps to reproduce

1. Install Sonarr, Jackett and Deluge through dietpi-software -> Software: optimized
2. Set up an indexer in Jackett
3. Hook up the indexer to Sonarr
4. Hook Deluge downloader to Sonarr
5. Mount external drive to /mnt/external (what I did)
6. Search for a series in Sonarr
7. Select /mnt/external as download path for the series
   And here you get the error "Folder is not writable by user sonarr"

Expected behaviour

• Should be able to select this as a download path easily and flawlessly.

Actual behaviour

• Cannot select /mnt/external as download path

Extra details

• I have tried changing the permissions of the directory to 775, which works but didn't fix the issue
• I have tried changing the ownership of the directory to user "sonarr" but get an error:
  chown: changing ownership of '/mnt/external': Operation not permitted
  I'm quite literally new to DietPi and Linux in general so yeah.

[Joulinar]

can you try to create a new folder /mnt/external/<NEW DIR>/. For testing purposes you could try to give 777 permission to that folder just to check if it's working.

BTW: you could use dietpi-drive_manager to manage your mounts 😃

[acryllect]

Already tried creating a new directory, didn't think it was important, but that didn't work.

Yeah I used dietpi-drive_manager to mount it :smile:

[bbsixzz]

I remember running these to make things work:

chown -R dietpi:dietpi /mnt/external
chmod -R 775 /mnt/external

I take it you're logged in as root.

[Joulinar]

@acryllect
where do you facing this issue exactly? Is it already right after searching the movie and trying to change the patch? Like this?

[acryllect]

@Joulinar Exactly
After selecting "add a different path" and browsing to it, that's when the issue comes in

[Joulinar]

@acryllect
can you go to /mnt and check who is ownig the external directory. For me the mount is owned by user dietpi. As well directories are created by this user.

root@DietPiVM1:/mnt# ls -l
insgesamt 12
drwxrwxr-x 8 dietpi dietpi 4096 Jan  7 00:52 dietpi_userdata
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root   4096 Jul  9 17:24 ftp_client
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root   4096 Jul  9 17:24 nfs_client
drwxrwx--- 2 dietpi dietpi    0 Jan  7 02:02 station
root@DietPiVM1:/mnt#

As well you can login as user dietpi on OS layer and try to do something on that mount

btw is this a network drive or an external hdd?

[acryllect]

@Joulinar
The ownerships of /mnt are as follows - keep in mind, I know very little of what this means:

root@alxepi:/mnt# ls -l
total 16
drwxrwxr-x 10 dietpi dietpi 4096 Jan  6 10:55 dietpi_userdata
drwxr-xr-x  2 root   root      0 Feb 14  2019 external
drwxr-xr-x  2 root   root   4096 Jul 14 19:24 ftp_client
drwxr-xr-x  2 root   root   4096 Jul 14 19:24 nfs_client
drwxr-xr-x  2 root   root   4096 Jul 14 19:24 samba

I might a have changed the ownership to the root user (from dietpi), for some reason, but nothing changed.

This is an external drive, plugged into one of the USB3 ports.

Edit: I also found that multiple users have posted about similar issues in the past on the dietpi.com forum - here's one that I found just now:
https://dietpi.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4595

[acryllect]

@bbsixzz
I am unable to change the ownership of the directory, even though I am logged in as root (after running su -).

I get the following error:

chown: changing ownership of '/mnt/external': Operation not permitted

[acryllect]

May the fact that the drive is partitioned as FAT be the reason it's not allowing me to change the ownership? I read, after a lot of searching, that FAT doesn't allow me to change ownership of files. Is this true?

[acryllect]

This was exactly the issue! I re-formatted the drive using dietpi-drive_manager selecting mode drive instead of partition (since nothing was on the drive) and selected the type as the Default, recommended type (instead of FAT).

I then created a new group and added sonarr to it:

root@alxepi:~# addgroup media
Adding group `media' (GID 1001) ...
Done.
root@alxepi:~# sudo usermod -aG media sonarr

Then, I created the Shows directory and changed the ownership of that directory to the user sonarr and the group media (for future use with radarr and lidarr):

mkdir /mnt/external/Shows
sudo chown -R sonarr:media /mnt/external/Shows

Thanks so much for your help @Joulinar and @bbsixzz , always great to have active people helping out idiots like me. For users who stumble upon this post in the future, here are some links that helped me figure stuff:
https://forum.manjaro.org/t/folder-permission-for-sonarr-and-other-apps/47719/3 - where I finally started wondering if the format type was a proble,
https://dietpi.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4595 - a user posted about a similar issue

[Joulinar]

yep I guess you would need to format your stick into ext4. Do the following

1. run dietpi-drive_manager
2. Unmount your device
3. go to Format
4. Start the format process with selected options (EXT4)
5. once done you will be ask to specify the mount point /mnt/external
6. exit drive manager
7. chown -R dietpi:dietpi /mnt/external
8. chmod -R 775 /mnt/external
9. cd /mnt
10. ls -la should now display dietpi user as owner of the mounted directory

EDIT:
damn I'm to slow 😃