Problems with Plex on Ubuntu LXC and special characters in file names

[maeries]

I posted this before in the plex forum, but I was told I should ask you guys:

It’s basically a duplicate of this one Bug: Using international characters in file names break extra support I just didn’t want to bring up an old post.

So I’m running server version 1.13.8.5395 on Ubuntu 18.4.1 as an LXC on proxmox, but the problem persists as long as I use Plex which is nearly two years.

Now to the problem. I have a separate directory for each movie and their extras in subfolders as it’s described in the plex support articles. When a file of folder in the movie’s directory contains a special character, the extras aren’t shown in the web interface or the app. It doesn’t matter where the special character is, all extras disappear. The movie itself works though.

Here are some characters I’ve tested:
Issue: äöüßàé
works: #"$*!

There is no problem in emby btw.
​

In case you haven't used plex before: It's a server software for managing movies and other media. It has a feature to show movie extras like interviews and trailer next to their movie. If the movie, one of its extras or the folder the movie is in contains one of the characters mentioned above, plex does not list the extras.

I hope someone here can help.
Thanks

 

[maeries]

Anyone?

Also let me know, if more information about my setup is useful

 

[AlexLup]

Try the same on Linux VM and Windows and see if it is the same, then its the Plex app that is at fault.

 

[santacruzskim]

resurrecting because it seems to be a related issue, I can't find it anywhere else, I figured out a solution to the problem, and the issue is related to Proxmox, not Plex.

ISSUE
I migrated my plex library to a Ubuntu LXC from Windows. The Windows library worked fine (it's still running, and pointed at the same media). I even tested on MacOS and it too works fine. However, the Ubuntu Plex server would completely choke if any character in any file name has a non-standard character. And boy what a rabbit hole it was just to figure out *that* was why it wasn't working.

For example, season 2, episode 35 of a kids show called "Bluey" is called "Café." I have all the episodes of season 2, but Plex would not report a single one of them. If I removed that one file, or even that character in the filename, all other files immediately showed up. I tested with other shows and movie names and ya - it really didn't like that é (an incredibly common letter!).

SOLUTION
Apparently when you choose the standard Ubuntu LXC template, it sets the character encoding to "C" instead of something standard like "UTF-8." After I changed that, it fixed all my problems. Hopefully, this helps someone else!

1. Confirm the character encoding is not set correctly. Run: locale and under "LANG" you will see LANG=C.
2. Generate the proper locale for your language/region by editing /etc/locale.gen and uncommenting the one you want to use. Mine is "en_US.UTF-8" Save & close.
3. Generate the locale from #2 by running: locale-gen
4. Edit the system locale file to select the locale you just generated: /etc/default/locale. For me it looked like this: LANG=en_US.UTF-8. Just that one line. Delete or comment out whatever else was in there.
5. Save, close, reboot. Problem solved!

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end

 

[coldwater]

SOLUTION
Apparently when you choose the standard Ubuntu LXC template, it sets the character encoding to "C" instead of something standard like "UTF-8." After I changed that, it fixed all my problems. Hopefully, this helps someone else!

1. Confirm the character encoding is not set correctly. Run: locale and under "LANG" you will see LANG=C.
2. Generate the proper locale for your language/region by editing /etc/locale.gen and uncommenting the one you want to use. Mine is "en_US.UTF-8" Save & close.
3. Generate the locale from #2 by running: locale-gen
4. Edit the system locale file to select the locale you just generated: /etc/default/locale. For me it looked like this: LANG=en_US.UTF-8. Just that one line. Delete or comment out whatever else was in there.
5. Save, close, reboot. Problem solved!

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end

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