I have a truenas that I run for just my media storage (Movies, Music, TV, Audiobooks). I am trying to figure out how to grant it access. I wanna be able to use the storage on my sparkbox as well for some other apps. How can I accomplish this. I'm very new to linux and this is my first real jump in. Thanks for any help.
14 replies
tomspark wrote:
Good news — this is very doable, and SparkBox is happy using storage that lives on another machine. The way it works: SparkBox looks at one folder for all its media, and we can point that folder at your TrueNAS instead of the local disk. Two parts: on the TrueNAS side you share your media folder over the network (TrueNAS calls this an SMB share), and on the SparkBox side we connect to that share and tell SparkBox to use it. Do you already have sharing turned on in TrueNAS? Reply with that and I'll give you the exact copy-paste steps for the SparkBox side — no Linux experience needed.
pmcgee1983 wrote:
Yes I already have an SMB Share and I was able to add it as a mount in linux via fstab. so the path for my truenas is 192.168.0.196/PlexStorage
tomspark wrote:
Nice — the fstab mount was the hard part and you've already done it. Now we just point SparkBox at that folder. You need the spot where the share appears on your SparkBox machine — it's the second folder in the fstab line you wrote, something like /mnt/truenas. Open SparkBox's settings file: sudo nano /opt/sparkbox/.env Find the line starting with MEDIAROOT= and change it to your mount folder, so it reads like MEDIAROOT=/mnt/truenas. Save with Ctrl+O then Enter, exit with Ctrl+X, then run sudo sparkbox up. When it finishes, SparkBox creates Movies, TV and Music folders inside your share — move your existing files into those and they'll show up in Jellyfin after a library scan. If anything complains about permissions after that, paste the message here and I'll give you the fix.
pmcgee1983 wrote:
is possible instead of moving the files to folder to point to the existing folders? I currently have a plex server that I am sharing with family so and I don't want to take that down while I work on setting up sparkbox. Plus I have to come up with some easy instrucitons to provide family to connect jellyfin. I also have additonal folder out side of Music, Movies, TV with my media. Is it possible to create these as well?
tomspark wrote:
Yes — no moving needed, and Plex keeps running the whole time. Jellyfin can already see everything inside your share; the Movies/TV/Music folders SparkBox makes are just where new downloads land. To use your existing folders: open Jellyfin in a browser at http://YOUR-SPARKBOX-IP:8096, sign in, then Dashboard, Libraries, Add Media Library. Pick the type (Movies, Music — Books covers audiobooks), then add the folder: you'll find yours under /data, which is Jellyfin's name for your share. Make one library per folder, your extra folders included. Since the files never move, Plex and the family won't notice a thing.
pmcgee1983 wrote:
update the .env file with my mnt info. The audiobookshelf I spun up does not show a /data folder. None of the folders that it shows when I browse shows my files that are mounted at /meda/PlexStorage that I can access outside of sparkbox in my ubuntu system.
tomspark wrote:
That's normal, oddly enough — Audiobookshelf is the one app in the bunch that doesn't look at the shared media folder. It only sees two private folders of its own (audiobooks and podcasts) that live on the SparkBox machine itself, which is why there's no /data and none of your TrueNAS files show up in it. Your .env change was still right — Jellyfin and the movie apps do use it. The fix is the same fstab trick you already pulled off: add one more line, copied from your PlexStorage one, but with your audiobook folder's name added to the end of the network path, and /opt/sparkbox/data/audiobooks as the destination folder. Then run: sudo mount -a && sudo docker restart sb-audiobookshelf After that, in Audiobookshelf create a library pointing at the audiobooks folder and your books should appear.
pmcgee1983 wrote:
Thank you for your help. I think I have things working now. Last question for now. I have installed Audiobookshelf and Imich, both show there is an update comapred to what was installed by sparkbox. How can I update to the latest versions?
tomspark wrote:
Great question! Both apps check for updates from within their UI — you can usually trigger them from their settings or admin pages. If that doesn't work, restarting the containers pulls the latest images: run sparkbox restart audiobookshelf and sparkbox restart immich from your terminal, wait ~30 seconds, then refresh the app page. That's the safest approach. Let me know if either one has trouble after the restart and I'll help you dig into the logs.
pmcgee1983 wrote:
unable to get image 'ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:v2.7.5': permission denied while trying to connect to the docker API at unix:///var/run/docker.sock I get this error when running the command in terminal.
tomspark wrote:
That permission-denied error means your user doesn't have docker access yet. Quick fix: run sudo usermod -aG docker $USER, then restart your terminal/SSH session (or log out and back in). After that, sparkbox restart immich should work without sudo. If you want to use sudo each time instead, just prefix the command: sudo sparkbox restart immich. Let me know if either approach gets you sorted!
pmcgee1983 wrote:
performed the Sparkbox restart immich. Did not pull latest still running 2.7 instead of 3.0
tomspark wrote:
That one's actually my earlier reply steering you wrong, sorry — a restart won't move Immich to 3.0, and that's on purpose. SparkBox locks every app to the exact version it has tested. Immich 3.0 is a big jump that changes how it stores your photo library, so we hold it back until it's proven safe — a bad jump there can wreck your photos. So nothing is broken on your end, and there's nothing to fix. Once 3.0 is tested it'll arrive with a normal SparkBox upgrade (sudo sparkbox upgrade). The update notices inside the apps compare against the newest version on the internet, so they'll sometimes run a little ahead of us — safe to ignore. Same story for Audiobookshelf.
pmcgee1983 wrote:
got it. Thank you for all your help.