[nick2day]

Sup guys!

I've been a long time user of Kodi/XBMC, and just now registered for the forums. lol I'm a pro linux admin by trade, so hopefully I'll be able to help out some...

Anyway, ran across an issue that I'm trying to get sorted.

Basically, I've got a NAS box that is running CIFS (samba) exports for my media. I've set up a new export that I want to use explicitly for metadata, thumbnails and artwork. The reasoning behind this is that I'm running into i/o issues with a few raspberry pi frontends, and i figured if I put them on the SSD and shared them over the network, everything should be good.

So far, I've not been able to sort out how to do this correctly. From the linux side of the house, I've verified that the CIFS export is working properly (I can mount it).

Currently running Gotham on Openelec. I can post my entire config if needed.... but its prob way more complex than it needs to be lol.

i've hit up the wiki page here: http://kodi.wiki/view/Artwork, as well as attempted the path subsitution thing here: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?pid=...3pid837103 with no luck. I just get 'blank' art when surfing the codi frontend.

anyway, I'll keep tinkering to see if I can find a solution. Just thought I'd ask anyone out there if they've managed to get this working sucessfully.

Thanks!

[un1versal]

Hello there welcome to the forums.

If you read http://kodi.wiki/view/Path_substitution it will become apparently clear to you the glaring omission, i.e. the huge disclaimer at the top.

Also terrible idea IMO! Since you are a professional Linux admin by trade, I'll spare you the explanation about introducing network overhead (in the form of latency) to a already fairly inefficient process that is the artwork caching process in Kodi. (because the caching is tied to the GUI e.g. is triggered when navigating around a library).

That said it should work ™ providing you copied a already populated Thumbnails folder to the new location. (I would imagine if your new folder is empty it could account for your experience).

Finally google or search forums for a tool called texturecache.py

[nick2day]

thanks!

That was exactly the problem. the images weren't populated yet.

Yah, its obviously not ideal... I'm just in a place now where i/o from the SD card on the rasp-pi is getting to be a huge bottleneck. read/writes on the SSD + network overhead are about 4x faster than reading the artwork locally.

Probably the better answer is to get a raspberry pi 2 (more memory) plus a high end SD card... but the TV's with the Pi's aren't as heavily used as the ones running off AM1 boxes, so i haven't been able to justify the cost quite yet.

I've tossed around the idea of doing some hackery to get images stored in a key value store, which ultimately might be where I have to go, (just doesn't sound like fun to set up). I'm just on a mission to get around my i/o bottleneck on a few devices. That, and its always fun to tinker...

Anyway, thanks!

[Milhouse]

Just allocate each Pi a unique thumbnail directory on the SSD - there's nothing wrong with Path Substitution unless you try to share a single thumbnail folder between multiple clients, as this just does not work (see orange box in wiki for explanation).

If performance is your objective, and space isn't an issue, then allocate each of your Pis their own thumbnail folder on your SSD, ie pi1/thumbnails, pi2/thumbnails etc.