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Hi
I am re-vising this as its not been cleared up...
RPi with OpenELEC in the VIDEOS menu then click..
files > add videos > browse > Windows network (SMB)
It shows "workgroup" it is not "browsing" the network at all, it sees itself and that's it, this is a bug, all settings for network should be controlled from the openELEC interface.
The setting that appears to need to be set it:
System settings > Services > SMB Client:
- Wins server (which is now no longer used as of Windows Server 2003 (10 years old))
- Workgroup
This appears to be a client to place this XBMC into a workgroup which doesnt work as WINS no longer exsist, its all DNS entries now (meaning XBMC / openELEC needs to register itself in to a DNS with the correct domain name)...
So the quesiton still stands (with out the need to SSH and turn on many other services) how do i get this software to "browse" Windows SMB domain / Workgroups?
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When asking XBMC to browse the SMB network, what part of XBMC is asking what part of openELEC for details?
IIt appears openELEC classify XBMC as a client (and nothing to do with them, which to be honest if the first mistake as thats the whole point if openELEC).
openELEC say "SMB Client" (under Settings > Service) does nothing in XBMC other than a filter the network results, if this is so, then this setting needs to be questioned as i put a something in here that wasnt "WORKGROUP" and i will still getting WORKGROUP showing up so when browsing the SMB for vidoes, so that confirms this "filter" isnt working (according to openELEC).
If this SMB Client is only a filter then why does it have a WINS server setting, a filter wouldnt need this.
This eludes to this SMB Client setting doing nothing at all, if this is the case then what does XBMC do when you request it to search SMB networks?
My goal here is to get XBMC on openELEC to browse Windows networks as it supposed to, shooting me down for this wont help the project, i want to get this working.
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UPDATE
Working....
as an overview here, the SMB Client inside XBMC doesn't seem to have any bearing on the SAMBA settings (or anything inside XBMC either).
to get this XBMC in the same workgroup as your PC the below details need to be met (ive only tested this in a domain setup, however the same principles apply to workgroups).
DNS server needs to be the same server as given by the DHCP server that allocated the address to the XBMC (which will normally be correct for any home router, this means all your PCs and XBMC must look at the same DNS server onsite (not on the internet).
the SAMBA.CONF (located in the share Configfiles) should contain the below (these are the only 2 settings i changed).
- server string = xbmc.mynetwork
(note on the above, for domains this must be the FQDN (fully qualified domain name), so something like "xbmc.network.local"
- workgroup = mynetwork
(note on the above, for domains this would be the NETBIOS name, so in my case "network"
Once the above settings are done, when i use SMB to browse anything on the XBMC i see the whole domain automatically as it shows NETWORK, also i can see the XBMC showing up on all PCs / Servers in the domain as well.
Interestingly you will notice in the same samba.conf file these settings
preferred master = yes
domain master = yes
local master = yes
Unless openELEC contradicts this, it would indicate that openELEC is trying to elect itselt as a Browser Master (which is fine), however it means all machines on the network could be abit shky in showing up unless the samba.conf file is correctly configured (all machines ask the browser master to resolve there names, the master then answers, if that fails it uses other methods to resolve names, its way more complicated than that, but thats the basics, DNS plays a huge roll in name resolution as well for WIndows based networking).
I used the share to config these lines in the samba.conf files (not using Windows Notepad), The above does not address username and passwords, this is outside the remit of this thread.
I did notice a bug though, when in putting username / passwords for SMB shares it doesnt show in the boxes when they are typed, there blank, however the username / passwords are saved