[jfath]

I'm running Atlantis final on three Ubuntu 8.04 machines that stream video from a central server mounted on the clients using samba.

I want to be able to scan the videos on a single client and have the information updated on all three clients. It seems like a reasonable way to do this is to make the MyVideos34.db a symlink and keep the actual database file on the central server.

This seems to work, but I wondered if all the video information (posters, etc.) are contained in the database, or if I need to share other files/directories as well. In particular, does the Thumbnails directory need to be shared? I don't know if those files are downloaded by the scraper or if they are generated by xbmc.

I'm also wondering if there is any state information stored in MyVideos32.db that might cause problems if that database is shared.

Any thoughts or information? Thanks.

jfath

[jmarshall]

Playcount information is stored in the db, but otherwise there's no state info that should be needed.

And yes, you should share most of your userdata folder.

Note that concurrent access to the database *may* present problems - I'm not sure.

An idea for the future is getting the upnp server to export a more complete library experience (i.e. complete with search, smartplaylists, edit of metadata and so on) which should allow a master xbmc instance to run.

[jfath]

Thanks, jmarshall.

I guess the trick for now is figuring out which parts of userdata should not be shared. I originally linked the entire directory, but I want each client to maintain its own state information (library mode on/off, etc.) while sharing media information (title, posters, etc.).

BTW: I recently switched the clients from MythTV and I'm finding XBMC to be a much nicer solution.

jfath

[jmarshall]

guisettings.xml should be local in that case. Thumbnails, database etc. should be shared. Probably sharing just the subfolders of userdata will suffice I think?

Note that there is state information stored in viewstates.db though.