OS X SMB Broken with XBMC 13.2
#1
Sad 
I was running v13.1 this morning. I added two new titles to my movies share (windows SMB RAID served by Windows Server 2008r2). Did the video refresh on XBMC and it all worked splendidly.

Updated to v13.2 this afternoon. I added two new titles to my movies share (windows SMB RAID served by Windows Server 2008r2). Did the video refresh on XBMC and the SMB errors flew up in my face. Couldn't connect errors, do I want to remove the missing files, etc…

So I go into XBMC, and I can't add sources or browser SMB Shares anymore. However, I can add new Sources using the add new source method and manually add the share by IP Address (SMB still) and that works!

What the heck? I've been pouring over this for hours and hours and reading threads that make no sense. Why can I add an SMB source by IP and not by Name? Furthermore, when I'm simply in the native OSX (10.7.5) I can add/browse/share by SMB without any problems!

Would greatly appreciate some help!

Thanks.
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#2
Reboot all windows/smb providing pcs and all routers/switches in your network. The problem with smb is the stupid netbios name resolving which is just crap (and might work or not - depending on how the windows smb master election went). So basically when dealing with smb either use a local dns server (and use the dns name) or stick to using ips ...
AppleTV4/iPhone/iPod/iPad: HowTo find debug logs and everything else which the devs like so much: click here
HowTo setup NFS for Kodi: NFS (wiki)
HowTo configure avahi (zeroconf): Avahi_Zeroconf (wiki)
READ THE IOS FAQ!: iOS FAQ (wiki)
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#3
To expand on what Memphiz said, all the computers on your network fight over control of SMB/Netbios domain control, and a specific computer will be chosen to oversee things (based on uptime and some other factors). Sometimes the winner of this fight doesn't actually handle netbios so well, so rebooting the computers will force them to do this again and choose a new master. They rechoose on their own every so often, so that's why it sometimes breaks when it was working before.

It's... kind of weird :)
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#4
Thanks for the information folks. It isn't necessary to turn off all devices on the network to force a reelection of the Browse Master. And frankly, the Browse Master isn't what causing the problem. My network has a DHCP and DNS and WINS server so all the netbios names are registered and resolved by WINS and DNS. In any event I've diagnosed this issue and found the culprit.

There is an add-in to XBMC called Watchdog. I had XBMC auto plugin updates turned off and at some point over the past several weeks had turned on auto update. The Watchdog plugin got updated and completely hoses the SMB services on the MAC. Not sure why. But it's completely reproducible.

I uninstalled Watchdog. Stopped SMB services on my MAC and then Restarted them. Everything worked fine with SMB Browsing and adding shares. Then I reinstalled Watchdog, restarted XBMC, and BAM! after it tries to scan the shares XBMC was configured with, then suddenly, the SMB service can no longer browse the network using a name space, and can only find and use shares added by IP address. To restore services it must be uninstalled and then the SMB service on the MAC has to be restarted.

I can reproduce this EVERY TIME. So I have SOLVED the problem by UNINSTALLING Watchdog. Not exactly a solution, but at least I know where the issue is...
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#5
More and more i have the feeling that this watchdog addon is some sort of bad trojan or so (it causes a lot of different issues - this one you described is one of the scariest to me ...)
AppleTV4/iPhone/iPod/iPad: HowTo find debug logs and everything else which the devs like so much: click here
HowTo setup NFS for Kodi: NFS (wiki)
HowTo configure avahi (zeroconf): Avahi_Zeroconf (wiki)
READ THE IOS FAQ!: iOS FAQ (wiki)
Reply
#6
Wow, I wouldn't have expected the watchdog add-on to do that. Weird.
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#7
Sounds a lot like http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/14212. Let's stop the fud about watchdog please, all other add-ons are affected too. It's just more apparent because it uses xbmcvfs a lot. If anything is the 'trojan' it's the module.
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#8
This seems different since the internal SMB client seems to go crazy, rather than the add-on, but you may be right that this is simply that watchdog is touching a problem in XBMC/Kodi itself more than others.
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#9
No real offense ment against the watchdog addon or its author. It just annoys me that i have already digged into problems just to finding out that at the end disabling the watchdog was the "solution".

Of course at the end its something in kodi maybe - but even i as a developer can be annoyed by bugs (even if i don't wanna dig into the real cause because i don't use the triggering addon).
AppleTV4/iPhone/iPod/iPad: HowTo find debug logs and everything else which the devs like so much: click here
HowTo setup NFS for Kodi: NFS (wiki)
HowTo configure avahi (zeroconf): Avahi_Zeroconf (wiki)
READ THE IOS FAQ!: iOS FAQ (wiki)
Reply

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