[thebestneo]

Hi,

I imported all my files under windows version.
I have a dual boot with ubuntu, and I want to clone the windows installation (settings, imported media, everything).

Is there a simple way to do this?

[thebestneo]

Up

[jhsrennie]

You can copy the userdata folder created by XBMC/Windows to the Linux installation, but there may be a problem with the file paths. If the files are local then the database will be full of paths like C:\XBMC\Video\whatever while in Linux the path would be /XBMC/Video/whatever. If the files are on a network server then the database will be fine provided you've used paths in the form smb://server/share/.

If the paths are not an issue you can just copy the userdata folder. In Windows it will be in C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\XBMC, and you need to copy it to the .xbmc in your Linux home directory. If paths are an issue you can use XBMC/Windows to export the database to a single file then edit the resulting .XML file to correct the paths and import it into your Linux installation.

Can your Linux install write to the Windows NTFS partition? If so, and if paths aren't an issue, maybe you could create a link from .xbmc to the Windows userdata directory.

[thebestneo]

Ok, thank you for your reply!

[john.doe]

I am also facing the same problem. I want to prevent Data replication.
here is the scenario. I have 2 OS ubuntu 12.04 and win7. installed XBMC in 7 and now i want to use the library created in 7 in ubuntu.
Can I use symlinks and path-substitution in ubuntu to use same library of 7.


eg this is path in 7 G:/Downloads/Share/Music/OrganiZeD/ and this is added into XBMC's library in 7.

now in ubuntu i have symlinked the user folder except the userdata folder. I manually created the userdata folder and symlined the contents from 7's profile. inside it i have added advancedsettings.xml with this
<advancedsettings>
<loglevel>3</loglevel>
<pathsubstitution>
<substitute>
<from>G:\Downloads\Share\</from>
<to>/media/01CB99F53C06FFC0/Downloads/Share/</to>
</substitute>
</pathsubstitution>
</advancedsettings>

But this does not seem to work.
Any help will be appreciated.

[jhsrennie]

Are you using the Win7 machine as a server to hold the media? If so you need to use a network source for all the machines so the paths look the same on all of them. This means the Win7 machine reading media from it's own share, but this works fine.

Create the source using the smb://server/share/ syntax. Either edit your sources.xml manually, or when you're adding the source click browse then add network location then feed in the server and share name.

You can probably use your existing library by exporting it to a single file, editing the XML in a text editor then deleting the original library and importing the edited one.

[john.doe]

Thanks for the quick reply.
Correct me if i am getting it wrong.
You are telling that i update my library to to use network share format on 7.
then i can use the same path on ubuntu.
one more thing i have got only one machine(laptop). i use 7 or Ubuntu. It is only connected to net cable sometimes. The media is stored in ntfs partition on the same machine as well as an external usb hdd..
I would like to be able to access this media from both ubuntu and 7. I use xbmc to play media and not as a networked htpc.
And also will using the network share path cause some performance issues?