So does it? I’ve had a live+ running wdlxtv for a while, and to be honest I’d rather not have the bloat I just want the best/easiest networking. Were a linux house, and like decent bitrate 1080p, so setting up samba for it is a no go. It’s also stupid to use windows networking to connect two linux boxes.
Rant aside I need another streaming box, and if NFS is still a maybe one day feature it will not be a WD device. Why deliberately exclude supported at kernel level?
I echo that sentiment. 100% linux household here too and it astonishes me how many home media and networking appliances only bother to support windows and mac management when they are natively coded in linux. I bought a WD Live recently and probably wouldn’t have made that purchase choice if I realised I coudn’t get fast linux-to-linux networking. Ironically however, when I view my NAS server DLNA shares from WD Live it appears to be viewing my file structure via NFS. Anybody know how I can gain root SSH access to this unit across the network?
@dougunder and zANavASHi
First post for both; do your homework before critiquing a product.
All manufacturers of consumer toys use Linux because it is free. Windows requires a per unit commercial licence; add $50 to the box price.
Why would a manufacturer invest resources in writing commercial support software for Linux when the market share of Linux is under 10%?
Linux users have a choice, if they don’t like the current free software they can fork and write their own version.
Linux users are not that bright, they cannot use a search engine, otherwise they would have Googled and found that NFS is already independently supported on the WDTV Live box, WDTV Live SMP is being worked on.
Oh my, did we violate the “Thou shalt not be critical unless thou have been a member for 12 moons with average post count of 2.8 posts per/week” commandment? LOL… and you came back to edit your original post because the statement you used to justify ad-homineming us with was ermmm… not quite accurate. I’m sure that any linux user with even mediocre aptitude at googling knows that the homebrew firmwares available will likely never support the Gen 3 models because WD (in the true spirit of the open source ethic which you claim we can fork at our leisure) has encrypted the partition with the data required to mod the firmware. (((((sigh))))) I think I’ll repackage this unit for sale on ebay and go googling for a Gen 2 model that I can customise the snot out of :-/
Why are ya’ll talking about a 2-year old product in this forum?
The Live+ forum is here: http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Live-Plus-Media/ct-p/wdtvlive
[EDIT: Moderator moved the thread.]
I mentioned i’m running wdlxtv on my existing WD Live+, so i’m well aware how to hack the box.
My point is why should I? If i’m buying another box, this time i expect MFG nfs support
“All manufacturers of consumer toys use Linux because it is free. Windows requires a per unit commercial licence; add $50 to the box price.” <which exists because people like me contribute code, not delibritly taking away features would be a nice thanks.
Again, NFS is supported in kernel, just give an editable /etc/fstab. No work needs done
Point being, if it is “being worked on” I’ll buy a boxee
Also, it’s not just *nix users. smb/cifs **bleep**. You want to stream HD over 100mb, you need NFS.
Search the forum, you’ll see plenty of demand
Wait a sec.
If you’re asking if the NEW Live supports NFS, YES, It does, in CLIENT mode. As far as I know, it does not have an NFS SERVER running.
This thread was posted in the OLD Live section, so it was assumed you were asking if THAT product supports NFS yet, and the answer is still “no.”
There is no such thing as an HD movie over 100 megabits per second (at least, commercially), and even if there were, the SMP won’t play it because that exceeds the published bitrate maximum of the bluray standard.
Every LIVE product I’ve owned (and I’ve owned them all) have played every bluray rip I’ve made without any issues at all… and I use Samba because it is secure, unlike NFS.
Does this help clarify?
I own the 2 year old product.
The point was checking on capabilities of current products prior to make a purchasing decision.
Perhaps my terminaology was off, I’m not a WD lineup expert after all, but what was of interest was what the current verion can do.
Ergo, i was in the right forum
Yes that is what I was asking, good to hear its been atleast partially implemented.
Though hearing that the V3 can’t be modded has dissuaded me from buying another WD player at this time. I’d like to not “have” to mod it, but it’s nice to have options considering how well corporations look after their previous customers…
Also, NFS is perfectly secure with a competent administrator, just as CIFS is not secure without.
The issue with CIFS is that the protocol has quite high overhead, so you don’t get anything close to 100m through put, just search the forums to see many issues with high bitrate films stuttering over CIFS.
If it works for you, that’s great. For you
Also, NFS is perfectly secure with a competent administrator, just as CIFS is not secure without.
I agree completely with your first statement, but would disagree with the latter. NFS, by default, provides NO authentication, short of an IP permit list, whereas CIFS REQUIRES authentication.
Being a competent NFS administrator requires a very broad skillset compared to what’s required to support a reasonable level of security for CIFS…
NFS is inherently insecure … by design. This fact is discussed at length in the WDLXTV forums. ;)
Additional protocols such as kerberos / ldap / nis / yp / automounters… etc must be implemented alongside it to map uids and handle the authorization / authentication. Let alone tedious administration of shared keys and whatnot…
With CIFS, by default, all authentication is handled natively within the protocol, and extensions are allowed for things like LDAP or whatever.
Sure, CIFS can be configured to ignore UID/PW, and has Guest mounts, but it has to be explicitly defined whenever a share is defined.
Username / Passwords are never part of NFS mounts, hence the requirement above. NFS requires an external “TRUST” be confirmed between the client and server before a mount can even be started.
Without additional substantial resources providing authentication services, the only thing an NFS server can check is the client’s IP address against the allowed list in the export tab… or, perhaps the requested UID / GID owning the mount. Both of these are easily spoofed.
Here’s a very good document explaining all this: http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3387.pdf
dougunder wrote:
I own the 2 year old product.
The point was checking on capabilities of current products prior to make a purchasing decision.
Perhaps my terminaology was off, I’m not a WD lineup expert after all, but what was of interest was what the current verion can do.
Ergo, i was in the right forum
Just FYI, the current product has its own forum, here: http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Live-Streaming-Media/ct-p/wdtvlive_streaming
“With CIFS, by default, all authentication is handled natively within the protocol, and extensions are allowed for things like LDAP or whatever.” --That is why the performance is not good
What you seem to have issue with is the linux design philosophy. Build a tool to do one job well. NFS is a good example of that. You want end to end encryption, LDAP authentication etc? There are programs to do so.
I would also argue, for my uses, and probably most others, the security is fine. If an intruder makes it through NAT, through my IP table rules, spoofs the WD’s IP and mounts my share, they’ll still find it squashes root and is only RO. So what do they get? They get to learn I’m currently watching The Wire and my kid likes WordWorld. The Horror.
Contrast that with windows networking: tack on security measures where ever possible, but leave the OS full of holes. End result? The perp takes your credentials using one of the myriad malware/viruses. All that security means squat, he has the keys to the castle.
Also NFSv4 fixes most of your concerns with a nice speed boost due to pNFS (which enables data access parallelism).
What are the chances of WD deigning to support it any time soon? Again, all the code it there, they just have to use it.
What you seem to have issue with is the linux design philosophy.
I have no issue at all with the Linux design philosphy. I’m a big fan of linux and have several linux workstations at home for the last 15 years. But NFS predates linux by decades. :)
I also have no problem with NFS as a whole. NFS has its uses, and it’s simple to use compared to CIFS.
I’m only defending my statement that I PREFER Samba over NFS because of its in-build security; security which requires a LOT of know-how to implement with NFS, and very little know-how with CIFS.
If an intruder makes it through NAT, through my IP table rules, spoofs
the WD’s IP and mounts my share, they’ll still find it squashes root and is only RO.
I’m not talking about outside-in security… I’m talking about internal security as well.
For example: I have multiple user accounts on my NAS… The different WD boxes have different accounts associated with them.
My Kids’ boxes can’t access content that’s not age appropriate, because those movies (PG 13, or R) are in separate shares that they don’t have a password for.
NFS doesn’t allow for that, since NFS doesn’t have the concept of access control per user. NFS inherently trusts that the CLIENT is policing access controls. As long as the client IP matches the access rule, it assumes that the UID/GID used by the client has whatever rights the export allows.
So, all my teenagers would have to do is change the IP address on their WD to be able to access whatever they wanted, because there’s no authentication mechanism.
In order for NFS to have the same flexibility on a WD (in CLIENT mode):
The WD would have to ask the user what UID / GID to use for all mounts.
The WD would have to be able to authenticate that UID / GID by means of a User ID and password.
The NFS server would have to be configured with the same mechanism the WD is using.
What are the chances of WD deigning to support it any time soon?
Well, I don’t know if they’d “deign” anything, as that implies that they believe NFS is undignified. :)
But, on opinion, I would guess that implementing NFS “server” support wouldn’t be very difficult, but the additional CLIENT support described above: Very unlikely.
But, to reiterate: The chances of them adding ANY NFS support to the product being discussed in this forum: Next to nil.
Appologies if i miscatogorized you, the comments eairlier in the thread kind of got me going.
- The WD would have to ask the user what UID / GID to use for all mounts.
- The WD would have to be able to authenticate that UID / GID by means of a User ID and password.
- The NFS server would have to be configured with the same mechanism the WD is using.
It would need the kind of support CIFS has, and they’d need to follow standards.
That aside, there are other ways to handle content control beside user accounts.
The movies i don’t want the inlaws etc to see, I store in my home directory. When I want to watch em, I export that folder. Now adays that’s a couple of taps on my android to run the script. I’m sure something similar could be done on your NAS, it is linux after all .
There is more than one way to skin a cat 
Also, the fact that there is no option to require a password to change settings is the problem. Basically, everyone is root. If there gonna sell a linux box, they could respect the security model a little bit.
If you think about it, it wouldn’t really take all that much for the WD to have the level of flexability you need with NFS.
I guess undignified is one way to use the word, Isn’t that what’s great about the english language? There is a degree of nuace not avalable to most other languages.
How else ya gonnie view it? They’ll happily package and sell all that lovely free code, but can they throw us a bone support wise?
Things like that are why we need to move toward gplv3.
Heh… The Mac crowd is hating GPL3 right now because that’s why they ditched Samba.
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