[gbonawitz]

Hi. I'm running Gotham on 2 Pis and my Windows desktop (which also hosts all of the content (via NFS connections) the MySQL database.)

The two RPis use the MySQL database fine, and can access all of the content.

My problem is that whenever I use XBMC on the Windows machine...
1) it can read all of the data (e.g. movie lists) fine from the MySQL database and it displays all of the artwork correctly [as scanned using the RPis)...
2) ...but when I go to play an asset, I always get the error message "The file is no longer available. Would you like to remove it from the library?".

I am wondering if the problem if the way the path for the assets is stored in MySQL. For instance, Avatar is listed as having the path "/media/movies/re-encoded/Avatar/"; this works fine because I have mapped "/media" to be a NFS mount on the PIs to the NFS share on the Windows machine. I know that, generally speaking, Windows perfers "\" instead of "/".

I've looked around the forums and have seen some folks suggest using SMB however I had to switch to NFS (at the suggestion of others in this forum) because I was getting terrible transfer rates streaming bluray content before using SMB.

Does this problem sound familiar, and does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[Milhouse]

NFS in Windows is busted in Beta 2.

Mind you, it's unlikely a Windows machine will be able to access a filename such as "/media/movies/re-encoded/Avatar" as this includes the Linux mount point - you'll need to define the source using the nfs:// notation, eg. nfs://<host-machine>/media/movies where <host-machine> is either the hostname or IP address of the NFS server. This way, both Windows and Pi clients should be able to access the NFS server using the same path.

[gbonawitz]

Thanks for the info.

I guess I can at least update the path setting now but seem to be blocked from watching stuff via XBMC on my PC at the moment. Not a big deal - for the most part I use TVs connected to the Pis, and just use the PC for validating tweaks.

[realjobe]

I'd also like to ask few questions about Path substitution..

Is it possible to "redirect" the whole library database to be loaded somewhere else than from the XBMC's own folders?

Case: Raspberry PI has OpenElec 4.0. Windows 8.1.1 has XBMC Gotham and has full library for Everytyhing. portable_user folder (i'm using portable mode = xbmc.exe -p) is shared with Samba.

Can Raspberry PI's XBMC use Windows machine's Library (TV shows & movies) via network?

PI's advancedsettings.xml

Code:

<advancedsettings>
<pathsubstitution>
  <substitute>
    <from>Local place for library</from>
    <to>Samba shares Windows XBMC library</to>
  </substitute>
</pathsubstitution>
</advancedsettings>

?

[Milhouse]

Can Raspberry PI's XBMC use Windows machine's Library (TV shows & movies) via network?

That's what MySQL is for (or you could try UPnP as a recent alternative).

The single-user SQLite databases are simply not intended to be shared by multiple clients. You *can* path sub the location of the local databases, but by doing so you may also corrupt the data when two or more concurrent updates combine and trash the entire database.

So yes it's possible, but it carries significant risk (that I happen to think is beyond acceptable, however you may disagree in which case go right ahead ).

[realjobe]

Thank you Very much for the answer. So I believe that the best way is to have a separate MySQL server somewhere on the LANSpace that has Samba shares Thumbs folder also next to it and then point every XBMC to use that MySQL server & special://Thumbs using <pathsubstitution>?

If so, How Can to transfer the already scanned beutiful video & TV show & music database to MySQL?
Are these instructions valid with Gotham provenly?

So

Code:

<advancedsettings>
  <videodatabase>
    <type>mysql</type>
    <host>192.168.0.x</host>
    <port>3306</port>
    <user>xbmc</user>
    <pass>xbmc</pass>
  </videodatabase>
  <musicdatabase>
    <type>mysql</type>
    <host>192.168.0.x</host>
    <port>3306</port>
    <user>xbmc</user>
    <pass>xbmc</pass>
  </musicdatabase>
  <videolibrary>
    <importwatchedstate>true</importwatchedstate>
    <importresumepoint>true</importresumepoint>
  </videolibrary>
</advancedsettings>

If above makes the music & Video libary used via MySQL, thumbs must be done via Samba

Code:

<pathsubstitution>
<substitute>
<from>special://masterprofile/Thumbnails/</from>
<to>smb://user:[email protected]/Thumbnails/</to>
</substitute>
</pathsubstitution>

Is this correct?

[Milhouse]

No. The Thumbnails folder has a dependency on the SQLite Textures13.db so you can't share thumbnails using path substitution. You can relocate the thumbnails folder of a single client to network storage using path substitution, just don't then share a network hosted thumbnails folder between multiple clients and expect it to work without problems.

Path substitution as a means of sharing thumbnails does not work reliably and is not recommended. Path substitution is recommended only for the relocation of thumbnails to network storage for a single client that has no limited physical storage with no means of expansion (eg. AppleTV). Once you have multiple clients accessing a shared thumbnails folder expect problems as each client will have a slightly different view of what artwork is stored within the thumbnails folder since each client will have a different Textures13.db file, and this database is the "index" for the Thumbnails folder.

Once the db no longer accurately reflects the content of the folder you experience problems such as artwork not being displayed.

If you want to create a MySQL db, you could consider exporting your currently scanned library and then import the exported metadata back into your MySQL based library.