[cgravelle]

Sorry for the long post but I have tried to provide all the necessary details.

I have two atv2's that I have setup with xbmc and I am trying to put together a shared scenario. All my movies and tv shows are on an smb share that both setups can see and play without issue.

I have created the mysql databases and added the necessary advanced settings. This works as expected and once the movies have been added to the library with one xbmc instance, the other instance sees them; marking a movie watched on one shows up on the other, etc.

Here is where the confusion comes in. I created an smb share specifically to store thumbnails. Based on other posts I have added the necessary:

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

I know that this works because if I do a completely new setup and start scraping, it writes all the images to this share and I can see them. The issue is however, that when I am browsing movies none of the images show up in the xbmc interface and I get errors in the log file. For example:

While scraping a movie the log file reports
17:47:58 T:158052352 M:131383296 WARNING: FileSmb::OpenForWrite() called with overwriting enabled! - smb://user:pass@192%2e168%2e0%2e4/xbmc/Thumbnails/Video/c/c6efce7a%2etbn

When I go to browse the movie the log file reports:
18:11:33 T:153133056 M:129851392 ERROR: Texture manager unable to load file: /var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XBMC/userdata/Thumbnails/Video/c/c6efce7a.tbn

Now, please notice that the error is now referring to /var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XMBC/userdata/Thumbnails/ and not special://masterprofile. So I also added the necessary substitution for that from path which did not help.

The most interesting part of all this, while I was playing around with this earlier this afternoon, I upgraded to 10.0-4 and all of a sudden it worked so I thought it must have been a bug that got fixed. Then when I upgraded my second atv2 it actually upgraded to 10.0-5 and did not work again.

I have started completely from scratch with a fresh database and fresh shares and still getting the same issue.

Is there something that I am possibly missing? I know the smb is working becase it writes the files, but then it can't read the files it just wrote?

What I have not done is wiped the devices, installed 10.0-4 manually and tried the same setup to see if it actually was fixed in 10.0-4 and then broke again in 10.0-5.

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated. :confused2:

[cgravelle]

Just a quick update to my previous post. I am still having the issue but think I have pieced together why 10.0-4 appeared to work.

With the original atv2 xbmc release, before I moved the Thumbnails to the smb, I was using rsync between the two devices. Once I started playing with the smb and using the special:// substitution as noted above I could not get it to read the images. Then when I upgraded to 10.0-4 all of a sudden it appeared to work. Once I wiped the devices and installed 10.0-5 it no longer worked.

What I think happened was that while the upgrade to 10.0-4 would write the images to the smb folder (based on the special:// substitution), it was reading them from the local Thumbnail directory which was still on the device at the time. Once the local folder was removed with the upgrade to 10.0-5 it appeared to no longer work.

In short, the special:// substitution is writing to the smb, but the /var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XBMC/userdata/Thumbnails substitution is not reading them from the smb folder.

Again, is there something that I missed? I know there were issues with reading "Pictures" from a share; does that extend to thumbnails for video files? Or am I limited to only a single substitution option?

Again, any thoughts would be appreciated.

[wankel]

I have a similar setup and I am getting the same errors when it tries to read the Thumbnails. Oddly, there are a handful of thumbnails that do actually work.

[cgravelle]

Have you checked to see if those odd thumbnails that actually work are in the local thumbnails folder?

Don't know if it's worth much but my share is on a synology nas not a windows based system. What about yours? Wondering if we can't narrow anything down.

[wankel]

I haven't had time to investigate it yet. I was hoping the new release would magically fix it. I am running my library and thumbnails off of my Unraid server.

[stevenD]

I even can't make this work on the 10.0 Mac OS X release. I think I've tried everything. Even pathsubstitutions with local dirs isn't working. The xbmc log shows that the advancedsettings.xml is read correctly, but it is still using the original thumbnails folder.

Have anyone sucessfully ever made this work on any platform with the 10.0 dharma release?

[chaoticmaster]

Sorry for the long post but I have tried to provide all the necessary details.

I have two atv2's that I have setup with xbmc and I am trying to put together a shared scenario. All my movies and tv shows are on an smb share that both setups can see and play without issue.

I have created the mysql databases and added the necessary advanced settings. This works as expected and once the movies have been added to the library with one xbmc instance, the other instance sees them; marking a movie watched on one shows up on the other, etc.

Here is where the confusion comes in. I created an smb share specifically to store thumbnails. Based on other posts I have added the necessary:

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

I know that this works because if I do a completely new setup and start scraping, it writes all the images to this share and I can see them. The issue is however, that when I am browsing movies none of the images show up in the xbmc interface and I get errors in the log file. For example:

While scraping a movie the log file reports
17:47:58 T:158052352 M:131383296 WARNING: FileSmb::OpenForWrite() called with overwriting enabled! - smb://user:pass@192%2e168%2e0%2e4/xbmc/Thumbnails/Video/c/c6efce7a%2etbn

When I go to browse the movie the log file reports:
18:11:33 T:153133056 M:129851392 ERROR: Texture manager unable to load file: /var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XBMC/userdata/Thumbnails/Video/c/c6efce7a.tbn

Now, please notice that the error is now referring to /var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XBMC/userdata/Thumbnails/ and not special://masterprofile. So I also added the necessary substitution for that from path which did not help.

The most interesting part of all this, while I was playing around with this earlier this afternoon, I upgraded to 10.0-4 and all of a sudden it worked so I thought it must have been a bug that got fixed. Then when I upgraded my second atv2 it actually upgraded to 10.0-5 and did not work again.

I have started completely from scratch with a fresh database and fresh shares and still getting the same issue.

Is there something that I am possibly missing? I know the smb is working becase it writes the files, but then it can't read the files it just wrote?

What I have not done is wiped the devices, installed 10.0-4 manually and tried the same setup to see if it actually was fixed in 10.0-4 and then broke again in 10.0-5.

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated. :confused2:

SMB Share access is currently read only. So if your ATV2 is trying to write to a share it will not work.

I am currently using the path substitution method but I use another pc to do all my updating.

[chaoticmaster]

I even can't make this work on the 10.0 Mac OS X release. I think I've tried everything. Even pathsubstitutions with local dirs isn't working. The xbmc log shows that the advancedsettings.xml is read correctly, but it is still using the original thumbnails folder.

Have anyone sucessfully ever made this work on any platform with the 10.0 dharma release?

It doesnt work on my dharma windows build either. But i think the feature was added after Dharma was release. I may be wrong.

[cgravelle]

SMB Share access is currently read only. So if your ATV2 is trying to write to a share it will not work.

I am currently using the path substitution method but I use another pc to do all my updating.

No, the smb is read/write because it writes the image files correctly to the share, it is just the reading that is the issue. As you mention in a later post it looks like it might be a known issue.

I guess I will have to fall back the rsync method. I am still writing images to the share to reduce the number of syncs and in hopes that one day an update will work.

[cgravelle]

I am currently using the path substitution method but I use another pc to do all my updating.

@chaoticmaster

On another thread (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=91485&page=6) I noticed that you mentioned you had it working. Does that mean if you use your PC to do the updating, the atv2 will actually read the thumbs using path substitution?

Also, am I safe in assuming you are using a nightly build since you mentioned that it didn't work in the 10.0 release? I am not a wizard but am more than comfortable around the command line and wouldn't have any issues manually installing a deb package. Is there a particular build that you are using?

Thanks.

[chaoticmaster]

Yes, I use a Win 7 machine with Dharma to handle all the updating. That machine uses symlink to access the Thumbnails which are stored on a DroboPro.

My ATV2 uses path substitution and is able to read the images from my share.
I am using the current official release on my ATV2, but it was also working on the 2/4/11 nightly.

[transcender]

Yes, I use a Win 7 machine with Dharma to handle all the updating. That machine uses symlink to access the Thumbnails which are stored on a DroboPro.

My ATV2 uses path substitution and is able to read the images from my share.
I am using the current official release on my ATV2, but it was also working on the 2/4/11 nightly.

Hey chaoticmaster, I'm using a win media/sql server w/ acer revo on linux and ipad
I cant get path subs to work, any insights?

[cgravelle]

So I have been doing some testing and this is where I am:

On a fresh install of atv2 10.0-5 using path substitution (from special://.... to smb://user@pass:192......), scraping will successfully write the fanart and thumbnail images to the share. Then while I try to browse videos it cannot find the files that it wrote to the share. If I then copy the files from the share to the local Thumbnail folder without ANY configuration changes the images appear while browsing. Therefore it seems that substitution is working for writes but not reads.

As mention in my first post, while looking at the log, it appears to be writing to special://masterprofile but reading from /var/mo.../Thumbnails. Therefore I tried putting a substitution for /var/.../Thumbnails in the advanced settings but still had the same issue.

I tried using xbmc on Win7, using a symbolic link (mklink /d Thumbnails x:/Thumbnails). The Win7 xbmc writes and reads successfully. However substitution on the atv2 still does not find the files. It only seems to want to pull them from the local Thumbnail folder.

So is the conclusion is that it is not properly substituting while reading. BUT WAIT! It appears to work for some people?

At one point, I almost wondered if it was an smb issue that I was having because when I was doing testing running the original atv2 release and exported the libabry to individual files, it wrote all the nfo,jpg, and tbn files properly to the share (different share same NAS). Then on a fresh install (still of the original release) scraping would read the nfo files but not the image files and it couldn't find them. Turns out that it must have been a known issue because now in 10.0-5 it properly scrapes the image files from the individual files. So in that case it is reading them from the smb share, putting them into the local Thumbnail folder while scraping.

I have now also tried the nightly build (2/8 is up there now) and this did not help either.

Looks like rsync it is

[wankel]

Is there not some way to mount the Thumbnails share using smb and then create a symlink from the local Thumbnails folder to the mounted share, like on Windows?

[cgravelle]

Is there not some way to mount the Thumbnails share using smb and then create a symlink from the local Thumbnails folder to the mounted share, like on Windows?

Good thought. On my mac I can mount it with

mount_smbfs //user:[email protected]/xbmc/Thumbnails /mnt/Thumbnails

The issues is that smbfs isn't on the atv2, it complains its not in /System/Library/Fileshare/smb.fs...

Tried doing a search with apt but didn't see it, and doing cross compiling is starting to get out of my league. If anyone knows where I can get smbfs for atv2 that would help too.

I would still like to know why substitution works for some and not others.