[Crispy3M]

I've been working on this for about two weeks now but it's time to hope for someone who may have had the same problem as I have.

I have a Jailbroken ATV2 with XBMC installed and working excellent!

What I want to do:

I have a Seagate 1TB USB External HDD full of movies. I bought an old Mac Mini PC G4 and a Segate 1TB USB External HDD. I'd like to be able to stream the movies from the External HDD to XBMC during the times that the I lose an Internet connection.

My Set up:

I am allowed free access to 3rd party wireless in my Apartment. I have the ATV2, my MacBook Pro, my iPhone, a Mac Mini PC G4(OSX 10.4.11) and an Apple Express all networked on the 3rd party wireless.

I bought the old used Mac Mini so I could connect the 1TB External HDD to it and network it to the ATV2 using XBMC via the 3rd party Wireless connection. I originally bought an Apple Airport Extreme but later found out that it is unable to join a third party wireless. but I digress. LOL!

The Problem:

I can't add the folders on the External HDD or even see the external HDD using "Add Source" in XBMC. I've set up sharing as best I could on the Mac Mini and can access my personal account folders on the Mac Mini but can't see anything else. I've tried both SMB and the ip address of the Mac Mini. In both cases, I can only get access to the Mac Mini but nothing else. Meaning, I connect just fine but the External HDD is not available.

Trouble shooting:

- I can see the Mac Mini on the network using both my MBP and XBMC
- If I click on the Mac Mini in "Finder" with my MBP, I'm immediately connected as a "guest" and can not access the folders of the Mac Mini... but if I click on "Connect as" and enter my user name and password, I can freely see all files, folders and attached HDD's.
- I've even connected the HDD to my MBP and shared it from there with no problems with XBMC.
- I've tried entering the IP, user name and password in XBMC with no luck.
- I've tried windows sharing only to see the Mac Mini but not see anything else.

I'm sure I've left out a ton of needed information, and I'll be happy to add as anyone who is interested in helping needs. I'm a total noob with XBMC and the ATV2 but have been able to do just about everything by just reading on here, but I've met my match with this one.

Any help would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Again, all I'm trying to do is somehow connect my Segate 1TB External USB HDD to the ATV2 somehow so I can watch the movies stored on the HDD.

Cheers,

C3M

[Murdoch]

Hey there fellow ATV 2 user
I haven't managed to get XBMC to run properly on my system but I did manage to do what you are trying. I have a iMac with a external hard-drive where I have a folder that I share on the network and in xbmc without problems through SMB.

Maybe you should do "repair permissions" in Disk Utility on the Mac mini. This sounds like a permission problem. You should maybe start the Mac mini from an OsX installation disk and run Disk Utility from there.

And make sure when you add the folder to share in system preferences, that permissions set for user "everyone" are not "no access".

Hope it helps.

[T800]

What OS is the Mac Mini running?
Is the HDD on the Mac Mini set up in the Sharing Preferences?
Is SMB turned on?

[Crispy3M]

Thank you both for the replies!

After two weeks of working on this, I finally figured it out last night around midnight. I gave the application SharePoints a second go and this time it seemed to work.

I had the Mac Mini sharing properly but just couldn't get XBMC to see anything past the connection. When I used SharePoints, I was able to share both my Music and Movie Folder on the USB External HDD.

It's working well as I type, however, the Music interface is super, super slow. I can navigate to the album quickly but when I select a certain album, XBMC takes about one minute to populate and another twenty or so seconds to start to play after selecting a song. The movies are way faster. Perhaps I scraped incorrectly or did something else incorrectly. That will be today's project. :-)

Thanks again, I very much appreciate you both taking the time to reply.

Cheers,

C3M