As a linux user, how do I simply add an existing audiobook folder from my home directory?

[brent-holland]

I am at my wits end.

So I have my audible library downloaded in /home/mortal/OpenAudible/books

When I try to add that directory, I get the following error:

Failed to ensure folder dir \"/home/mortal/OpenAudible/books\" Error: EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/home/mortal/OpenAudible/books'","levelName":"ERROR","level":4}

I have tried the following:

chmod -R 770 /home/mortal/OpenAudible/books 
# I even gave it ownership of the directory, which I really shouldn't have to do
sudo chown -R audiobookshelf:audiobookshelf /home/mortal/OpenAudible/books
>drwxrwx---  2 audiobookshelf audiobookshelf   12K Dec 24  2023 .

No matter what, I still cannot add it. I keep getting the same error. I shouldn't have to give this app ownership of my audiobooks. There has to be a better way?

[advplyr]

Most likely it's because it is in another users home folder

[brent-holland]

It's in my home folder. 'mortal' is my non root account that has all of my existing audiobooks. I don't understand how this very common use case wasn't addressed in the instructions, but I'm happy to open a pr once we solve the problem

[advplyr]

The user that the service is set to run as is audiobookshelf which wouldn't have access to the home folder of other users by default

[brent-holland]

Yes, I understand that. If you read my previous comments you'll see that I tried to give audiobookshelf user access to those folders, but it still failed. What's the proper way to do that here?

[advplyr]

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/507571/how-to-allow-folder-permission-for-another-user-in-linux

[brent-holland]

Yeah I wound up having to do the following

sudo groupadd book_readers
sudo usermod -aG book_readers $USERNAME
sudo usermod -aG book_readers audiobookshelf

sudo mkdir -p /shared/books
mv /home/$USERNAME/yourAudiobookFolder /shared/books/ # change me!

sudo chown -R $USERNAME:book_readers shared
chmod -R g+rwX shared
sudo systemctl restart audiobookshelf.service

You might want to update the documentation on setting up the library because this was pretty confusing. I honestly think maybe I had it earlier and didn't do a restart.