I've also been trying to do the same thing, but I'm running into two problems:
XBMC is XBMCBuntu (previously "live") Eden installed on a small "book-size" machine (a Foxconn NT330i Intel Atom 330 1.6GHz, dual-core).
Drives are attached by USB and networking is all by WiFi. It all works beautifully for the local TV.
I'm sharing the entire filesystem--that is to say I've got 3 physical drives each with 1 partition on it.
So, if one filesystem is labeled _Argosy and lives in /dev/sdh1, then the automount point is /media/_Argosy and I share that /media/_Argosy.
After setting up SAMBA I am able to access all 3 filesytems by WinXP and a also by CIFS in a couple of android devices.
But, I run into 2 problems:
- Permissions
Many times (every time?) when XBMC reboots, all the automounted filesystems on the USB drives show up with permissions of 466 (r--rw-rw-)
This is really strange, since a directory with the x permission turned off isn't navigable! Why would these be the default permissions for a mounted FS?
I've tried umounting the filesystems, creating the mount points in /media (normally they are auto-created by something in XBMC), chmod 755, chown tanya.tanya * (the non-root user created when I installed XBMCBuntu Eden is "tanya") and remounting by mount -a. No dice--comes back 466.
After mounting, chmod 755 the mount points (while mounted), and this seems to stick for a while. But later gets overwritten--back to 466 when XBMC is just sitting there--no reboot or umount/mount that I can see.
Shotgunning everything under /media by find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \; doesn't help either.
Can anyone tell me where the permissions for the automounted USB drives are specified?
If I chmod 755 /media/_Argosy (and the other 2) then the XP box & android devices can navigate the FS--but this doesn't seem to stick!
I would like this to stick, but I don't see any way to option for ext2 to specify permissions in /etc/fstab.
- Performance
Problem 2 is performance. For a week or so everything was OK, then I started playing videos by the remote devices and they lag terribly, stop and start a lot, etc.
Top says CPU idle is 91%, and only about 1/2 the memory seems to be used at any time.
diskmontools says the short test passes OK (for whatever that's worth).
Maybe this is a WiFi problem, but I kinda doubt it--there's not a whole lot of traffic on WiFi in the house and the AP is about 15 feet from the box through 1 interior wall. To rule it out, this weekend I plan to reproduce the problem, then turn of WiFi and connect XBMC by copper then test again.
Maybe my hardware is weak? It's a pretty small computer, but the DIYNAS folks seem to say you don't need a hot-rod rig just to serve files in your house. The CPU usage seems ok, so what am I missing here--some resource I'm running out of?
I'm really guessing here--any performance experience using XBMC-Live as a NAS would be great--even a statement that "this just ain't a good idea with XBMC".
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help out a SAMBA noob.