Streaming issues with Linux Mint 15

I store most of my media on my Linux desktop computer.  I need a way to stream it to the SMP over ethernet.  I have tried right-clicking the folder and configuring the share that way, to no avail.  It gives 2 choices: SMB and NFS.  Neither seem to work.  I have granted the proper permission with chmod -R 777 (which I discovered on another post).  No progress there.  Is there something I am missing?  I am a Linux novice.

You have to have either (1) Samba (server) running or (2) NFS enabled.  Since neither is probably done by default, I doubt that right-clicking a directory and “sharing it” is too effective.  I don’t use Mint/Ubuntu, but there is lots of online documentation for them, so in that sense they are good for newbies.  I easily found several articles on Samba that should help you get it setup:

http://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/system-config-samba

http://nixmash.com/linux/linux-mint-14-samba-configuration-tips/

http://www.unixmen.com/how-to-configure-samba-using-a-graphical-interface-in-ubuntu/

I don’t see any kind of GUI for NFS (though there are also install/setup guides), and you have to enable NFS in the SMP in order to use NFS, so I would recommend you try Samba/SMB first.  I use Samba to serve blu-ray sourced video from my Linux server to our SMPs and it works great, though a couple of people on this forum have claimed to have performance (throughput) issues with Samba.  Samba is also highly confiigurable (via its configuration file) and has allowed me to get our file sharing set up exactly as desired.

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Thank you, ncarver.  I appreciate the links and advice.  I have tried those measures already with no success.  I have tried the Samba options and the NFS options.  I have done everything possible, so the device is useless to me.  I will try to return it.  The reason I bought it was for the streaming options.  Not sure why it can’t just be a simple matter to setup, this is ridiculous.

Wow. You expect it to work even if the servers don’t work?

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TonyPh12345 wrote:
Wow. You expect it to work even if the servers don’t work?

Have to agree with the esteemed contributor above. If you can’t get SAMBA or NFS working on your Ubuntu server, how is that the fault of your WD box? Can you access those shares from a Windows computer on your network via SAMBA?

I’ll come at it from a different angle though. What about trying to do this via the media server option over DLNA?

You could run something like Plex or Servio on your Linux box and stream your local media to the WD SMP that way. There are a few feature that you don’t get if you are not mounting drives, but in general DLNA supports all the video and audio streams from your server and should work well. Although I do it from Windows, I use both MyMedia from PlayOn, and Plex, to stream to my WD devices and it would be pretty similar.

Good Luck

-P

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vividvibe wrote:

Thank you, ncarver.  I appreciate the links and advice.  I have tried those measures already with no success.  I have tried the Samba options and the NFS options.  I have done everything possible, so the device is useless to me.  I will try to return it.  The reason I bought it was for the streaming options.  Not sure why it can’t just be a simple matter to setup, this is ridiculous.

If you have “tried” setting up Samba and NFS already and had “no success” with the SMP then there are four possibilities: (1) you didn’t get things set up properly in Linux (not too unlikely given that you say you are new to Linux), (2) your home network is setup improperly (also not unlikely given what I see on this forum), (3) you didn’t read the proper instructions for the SMP or aren’t following them properly, or (4) your SMP is defective.  What I can assure you is that the there is absolutely zero possibility that (a properly functioning) SMP just “doesn’t work right” with Linux and networking gear that is properly configured (and properly functioning).  Thus, you have certainly not “done everything possible” as then it would be working.  Took me literally 5 minutes to stream to the first SMP I bought, from an already setup and properly functioning Samba server.  I have never used networked multimedia gear that was simpler.  All it would take is having a firewall without open ports on your server and your SMP wouldn’t work, and in fact could not possibly work.  There is no way the SMP can fix user errors.  Have you demonstrated that you can access the Samba shares from another networked computer connected just as the SMP is connected?  If not, then you haven’t even started to try to debug this.

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I would like to apologize for the tone of my earlier post.  I can only attribute it to extreme frustration.  I was operating (for some strange reason) under the assumption that the product would stream “out-of-the-box.”  I had no idea about Samba or NFS until further research.  It was my fault that I mis-interpreted the information given about the product.  I suppose I will continue to try to get a properly setup and functioning  Samba server.  It just seems like a lot of work for the average joe to get through.  Hopefully I am not out of line in my thinking.

I think the issue is more that it can be less than trivial to get Samba properly setup under Linux.  Like I said, with an already properly setup Samba, the SMP was trivial to get streaming from the server.  However, Samba is quite flexible–or put another way–not always straightforward to configure.  Distro’s GUI tools vary in how well the configure it and how much they allow you to configure from the GUI.

Here is what I would try from the Linux server to see whether Samba is setup OK:

(open a terminal and type…)

(1) smbclient -L localhost

Just type enter if prompted for passwd, should see the share(s) and other info.

(2) sudo netstat -ltup

Should see ports opened by both smbd and nmbd, ports will mention netbios and microsoft.

(3) make certain the firewall is not blocking the ports required by Samba, which appear to be:

UDP: 137, 138 and TCP: 139, 445

Frankly, when having connectivity issues, the best thing is often to simply disable the firewall on the server until you get file sharing working (disconnect your network/LAN from the Internet if necessary to be secure).

I haven’t used the Ubuntu firewall in ages, so don’t recall how easy it is to enable Samba access, but there should be info on the web about this.

(4) Examine the Samba config file that was created by the Samba config tool to make certain it looks reasonable.  It will generally be /etc/samba/smb.conf

Assuming you have your gateway router setup reasonably, I would allow anonymous access to the share just to avoid having to deal with passwords and the like

A share config will be a section that looks like this:

[Video1]
    comment = Video disk #1 on file server
    path = /Video1
    public = yes
    browseable = yes
    writeable = no

If you want to use the Media Library, you have to make the share writeable.  I have a somewhat complex setup where the directories containing the actual video files are not writeable by the SMP, but a merged directory share that has symlinks to the actual files is writeable (and is used by the SMP Media Library).

(5) Go to SMP and try to access share

I would first simply try to access the share without dealing with the Media Library.  The steps to do this start on p. 26 of the SMP manual.  So Network Share > Windows Shares > [should see your server, select] > select share name.

If you still don’t see the share from the SMP, you really need to try another computer on your network to understand what the problem might be.  You should also give us more info about your network topology and equipment.

Hope this helps.  If Samba is setup correctly, getting the SMP to see it should be pretty straightfoward.

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I finally have it functioning properly.  I’m almost sure it was a firewall issue, but it is now resolved.  Thank you everyone who put up with my ignorance, especially ncarver.  You were most helpful.  Now I can move on to the next issues in different posts!

Great to hear!  Firewalls are a common problem when trying to setup servers, and it is fairly difficult to check on what is being blocked/allowed without relying on the distro’s GUI tool.  Unfortunately, not all distros have good GUI tools.

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