Win Multi-room: Proper Network Shares
#1
Can someone confirm for me if I have this correct or not? I apologize for being flaky but I've just spent two very frustrating days first rebuilding a raid array and then trying to get a clean W7 install on one of the machines and my brain is fried and I can no longer remember what I have an have not tried in XBMC.

If I want to setup a multi-room environment, is this the proper way to do it:

  1. Define the folder(s) containing the content on the primary machine (e.g. C:\libraries might contain folders like \music, \videos, \pictures, etc)
  2. Map as network drive, even on the primary machine (so for example I setup drive X: to actually point to C:\libraries)
  3. Share this network drive with the entire network and make sure its accessible by all machines on it? I have my machines in a HomeGroup where they can each access this location
  4. In XBMC add each library source for music, videos, etc by selecting SMB source and then pointing it to the X: share

Do I have this correct? I got music working yesterday but I did it wrong so I want to make sure I have the correct technique so I can redo it correctly

thanks in advance, i feel like i'm in the home stretch
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#2
You don't need to map them as network drives, just share out the folders. Homegroup was a pain when Win7 first came out with XBMC not sure if it has improved with Windows updates and service packs.

Best way to set them in XBMC is "Add network location" and then use an IP address, username and password.
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#3
(2012-06-22, 15:03)live4ever Wrote: You don't need to map them as network drives, just share out the folders. Homegroup was a pain when Win7 first came out with XBMC not sure if it has improved with Windows updates and service packs.

hmmm, I coulda swore I tried that but it still saved them in the db as C:\libraries\music, etc

(2012-06-22, 15:03)live4ever Wrote: Best way to set them in XBMC is "Add network location" and then use an IP address, username and password.

I will try this when I get home today, the primary box has a static IP of course so this should work well
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#4
Nope didn't work with IP at all...honestly I know this is an open source product and I REALLY appreciate the hard work of all the developers who dedicate their time to this but the documentation is just bad, I'm sorry... its often out of date, its confusing and contradictory, it makes simple things complicated and it omits simple steps that might be obvious to those familiar with it, but not to noobs.

I can't promise this will work for everyone but I couldn't get IP to work at all, I just shared my directories to my HomeGroup, subscribe all puter that want to connect to the HomeGroup then used the machine name via SMB in XBMC. So for example all my paths look like this:

smb://PrimaryPCName/libraries/

then under that /movies /tv, /music etc

all that nonsense in the docs about including username and password in the path doesn't work at all, at least not for me
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