10.7 Lion & XBMC: HowTo share with PureFTPd Manager

As a lot of people, I would like to switch to Lion, but I can not because of the smb problem between Lion and XBMC.
I read a lot of articles about samba 2.0, how to install 3.0, the use of NFS, UPNP, etc ... but not a lot about FTP.
On Snow Leopard, I use PureFTPd Manager as FTP server. Since there is no ftp server in Lion, I just try it (on a "test Lion" on an usb drive). First the SL version works perfectly on Lion.
Then I quickly manage to make it works with XBMC. I can now access to my complete movie library on XBMC via FTP.

So is there any "side effect" I have not see yet ?
Can FTP and PureFTPd be a sustainable solution ?

Thanks,

I just install Lion upon Snow Leopard.
I use PureFTPd Manager to share my folders with XBMC.
It works fine, and it is quite easy to use.

No pb with 720p 5.1 FLAC movies.
No pb with scrappers.
No pb with subtitles.

I did not try for musics.

Hope it will help !

Once you downloaded pureftp, how did you set it up with your apple tv?

Where was pureftp when I was looking for an alternative to smb. Ok, thats good feedback, will consider the update to Lion and try out this option.

TMEMISE Wrote:Once you downloaded pureftp, how did you set it up with your apple tv?

First I create an user in pureftpd. Let's name it user/password (easier: a ftp user in a ftp group). You can also create a account with the same name and the same password that your Lion account. For user you choose your account and for group you choose Staff (I did that and it works fine).

I choose my Movie directory as user directory, I do not use virtual directories.
Sometimes PureFTPd could ask you to change some access right. Do not change them, you can lost access to the folder (and so you must use the terminal to gain it back, chown command).

Then launch the server. You could test it with a FTP client (Filezilla).

On ATV2, your share must be like:
ftp://login:_password@your.IP:21/folder

For example, I have 2 folders: Films and iWatchTV. My shares are:
ftp://login:_password@192.168.0.3:21/Films/
ftp://login:_password@192.168.0.3:21/iWatchTV/

and it should work !
(stupid smiley ... remove _ before password)

Hi, I got ftp running and can play videos, but I can't delete files from XBMC anymore.
Do you know how to fix that?

I'm afraid I've stumbled at the first hurdle, the very first page of the setup wizard. Can you post precisely what settings you used for every single variable? For example the bit about setting up an ftp user, and setting up virtual users, and whether it launches at startup etc.

Sorry, n00b...

I have to agree with Owen-b. Being a Noob, step by step would be more helpful. I tried it as you posted and got no where.

matthijst Wrote:Hi, I got ftp running and can play videos, but I can't delete files from XBMC anymore.
Do you know how to fix that?

I do not delete from XBMC because I do not want that write access exists from network on my computer. I can not help you for that.

Maybe in Preferences > Access Rights (maybe not the good translation mine is in French ).

TMEMISE Wrote:step by step would be more helpful.

Setup Wizard:
Anonymous Access > Skip (Tick)
Virtual User > Continue without any changes
Server logging > continue
System Settings > Check the two ticks then continue
Conclusion > Configure

In PureFTPd Manager, I think my changes are:
Preferences > Anonymous > Desactivate
Preferences > Mac OS X > Activate Bonjour, Automatically start PureFTPd in StandAlone mode

Then in users > New:
Name: Name of the apple account
Password: I put the same as my apple account
Directory: /Users/Benjamin/Movies for example
Restricted access checked
User: Name of the apple account, Benjamin in my case
Group: staff

Then save the user.
if PureFTPd ask you about changing authorization of the folder chose Continue and NOT Repare & Continue. It will work without that. And you can loose access to the folder … SO TRY WITH A TEST FOLDER YOU CAN TEMPORARY LOSE ACCESS (in this case use in terminal "sudo chown -R your_account /folder/you/loose").

In the Status windows > Start the server

You may try it locally with Filezilla or Firefox:
ftp://login: password@yourIP:21/

Then you can configure XBMC to work with it with the share above as :

Server adresss: your local IP address. Not the one showed in PureFTPd. It is too smart and (in my case) shows my internet IP. You must use your local IP, which has to be fixed (DHCP configuration of your router).

Remote Path: if the default path of the FTP user is /Users/You/Movies/, you only have to put the subfolder here.

Port: 21

Username: the FTP username, same as the Lion username in here.

Password: FTP password, same as the Lion password in here.

So for example, after filling the fields, XBMC will show you that:
ftp://yourIP:21/subfolder
or ftp://login: pass@yourIP:21/sub

In my case login Benjamin / password tata
share /Users/Benjamin/Movies/iWatchTV
FTP default path /Users/Benjamin/Movies/
> ftp://192.168.0.3:21/iWatchTV
or ftp://Benjamin:tata@192.168.0.3:21/iWatchTV/

It works great for sharing read-only files to XBMC from Lion.
Currently we can not delete and rename over the FTP protocol.