[giopanda]

hello everyone,
first post here, so i hope is in the right section.

as in the title, i'm having issues trying to share files between my mac and the rpi with raspbmc.
i tried for a few weeks to let the rpi to read files (movies and tv shows) from my mac, had smbup installed, and everything was running smooth..most of the times..often i couldn't get the rpi to see the mac, showing that the file wasn't in the archive anymore, and when working it had some stuttering problem on some videos.

restarting the rpi sometimes solved the problem, other times i had to restart the mac and some times the only way was to put the file on a usb stick and plug it directly in to the rpi.

but this of course (other then being an hassle) involve having the computer always on when i want to see something, and honestly i want to avoid this.

during the weekend i decided to switch configuration, so i plugged one of my external hd in the rpi usb port (this drive doesn't get powered by the usb, it has its own power cord) and decided to move all my videos to that drive, to have the rpi act like a nas.

problem now is, other than taking forever to move 490 gb of files (it takes 30 minutes for a 1.4gb file to copy, and sometimes at the end an error appear saying that the file cannot be copied because it's being used, other times i have to force restart finder because it crashes..) it seems to take forever just to connect to the rpi.

i already followed tons of guides and tutorial, but i really can't get it to work.

trying to open the 'samba shares on raspbmc' on my finder results in an error, it shows connection failed and if i try to click on 'connect as' it shows an error saying that the server doesn't exist..
one of the suggestions i find was to edit /etc/avahi/services/samba.service but guess what, i can't find that file (or the whole folder tree) anywhere on my computer..

so the only way i can see the rpi from my mac is going through finder>go>connect to server (mind i'm using the os in italian, so i don't know the exact labels in english) or cmd+K
some suggest using smb://raspbmc other cifs://raspbmc
the results are the same, it takes 3/4 minutes to connect, then it asks if i want to connect to 'devices' or 'pi' and 'raspbmc' appears as an external drive (with the eject arrow next to it) in my finder, in 'shared' right above 'samba shares on raspbmc'.

now, is this the right (and only) way to go?
is it really this complicated to get the rpi and mac communicate?
i read about different ways to connect, such as afp, ssh, nfs but all of them requires terminal commands and editing files that i can't even find on my mac..

since this might help, i'm on a iMac 27 (late 2010 if i'm not mistaken) osx 10.9.5, raspberry pi b+ with latest raspbmc update (no nightly) and everything is connected wirelessly.

i'm feeling like i wasted money on this rpi, but i know it's not like that, there must be a way, but i cannot see it at all.

so thank you very much for your help guys!

[FlowT]

Well, I can't really comment about rasbmc directly, but with openelec I have no problems at all connecting to the Pi's smb shares. Have you tried connecting both the Pi and maybe your mac directly to your router through Ethernet cables? Just to make sure the problem is not related to your wireless connection. A transfer time of 30 min. for 1.4 mb does sound like something could be dodgy there. Do you have any problems to connecting to other smb shares on the same network?

On the mac you can check your wireless connection speed by pressing alt while clicking on the wifi icon in the menu bar. Of course that doesn't say much about how things look like on the Pi side. If you have a spare sd card lying around you could install a different distro than Raspbmc on it and see if it suffers the same problems. Just to narrow down the possibilities of where things go wrong.

etc/... is a hidden directory in OS X. So you need to enable the finder to show hidden files to be able to actually see it.

[wrxtasy]

giopanda,

To find the ip address of the RPi:
Kodi > Sytem > Settings > SysInfo > Network

Next OSX > System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General > Unlock the Padlock and enter password > Allow apps downloaded from > change to Anywhere

Then download a program for the Mac called Cyberduck, and drag it into your OS X Applications folder, right click it and Open.

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/8392/cyberduck

With Cyberduck you want File > New Browser > Open Connection > SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol)

Server = ip.address.of.RPi : Port 22
Username = pi
Password = raspberry (these both might be U=root & P=root)
Tick Add to Keychain
Connect
and answer yes to any permissions questions and tick the box to remember.

You should then be in the Home Folder of the RPi

PS. Another useful tool for the Mac is Pi Baker for writing and backing up SD cards and USB dongles, highly recommended.

http://www.tweaking4all.com/hardware/ras...-pi-baker/

[giopanda]

FlowT

thanx for your help!
in order:
no i don't have the possibility to connect them both with cables..actually i might conncet the pi, but that would mean moving it and my tv around the house
i don't know if you did read my post wrong or you just typed incorrectly in yours, but i wrote 1.4 gigabytes in 30 minutes, not megabytes
..and i don't have any other smb shares to test.
my wireless speed looks fine, on speedtest.net i'm always full speed 19.75 dl and 9.9 ul (my fiber connection is guaranteed for 20dl and 10ul) so i guess that's not the problem.
and last but not least, i don't have any decent micro sd around to try another distro

thanx for the tip about hidden folders, i can see it not, but the problem persist, there's no 'avahi' folder inside

wrxtasy

omg thank you so much, i didn't even think about cyberduck!
i know that app very well, i used to use it everyday when i had to upload files to clients, but i never thought about copying files that way!
it took like 5 seconds to set up, everything went smooth and now i'm uploading all my stuff at at least twice the speed than before with smb of cifs!

btw i also solved the problem of files that can't be copied because 'in use'..it's a finder problem in mavericks, if you tick the 'show icon preview' it just extract a frame from the video, so finder itself keep the file in use and then says it can't copy it..smart

anyway, looks like everything has been sorted, just a couple of things, should i now delete smbup and restore the default smb?

i read that with smb is better the format the usb hd plugged into the rpi with ext4..how important is it now that i'm using ssh?

[wrxtasy]

If you want your RPi to have the ability to write to USB connected drives you have to format it on a Mac with the MS-DOS (FAT) format or install FUSE for OS X and also then install the ext2 extension. Which will allow then allow you to format with ext2 using Disk Utility in OSX. ext2 is a Linux / RPi write compatible format.

http://www.macworld.com/article/2855038/...-fuse.html

SMBUp can be removed from the Mac, but beware you need to be on top of your game then sharing from a Mac using the inbuilt SMB protocol. Users usually run problems when sharing permissions issues are not set correctly. There is a thread here that will detail likely issues you may run into:

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=214091

[bob007]

Hello,

I do not know that this is the right forum here, but I did not find better yet. I have Raspberry Pi2 and an external WD HDD connected with USB (HDD have 2 partition: 1 for Time Machine backup, 2 for films). When i connect the HDD via USB to my macbook then the TM automatically runs and create backups. I would like to do this via Pi now. I could connect to the Pi from Mac, but the TM does not see it.
I tried to edit avahi config file according to this: http://gettingstartedwithraspberrypi.tum...overy-with

but i got always the same error message. Error writing /etc/avahi/services/sftp-ssh.service: Read-only file system

Could somebody help me out with this problem? Can somehow i access to this file anyway? (i am using ssh when wanted to edit this file)

Many thanks for the help in advance!

I am using Kodi 14.2 Openelec