[xgamer99]

I have a few XBMC machines through the house which get the media from a central server. The problem here is that every time new media is added, each of those boxes need to update. This is absolute hell if I ever need to completely re-scrap the library (takes hours to do, and then multiply that by the number of machines in the house).

I was wondering if it would be effective to have an xbmc home directory on the server that the clients can then mount from (using NFS or what have you). This way the library is in a central location. Settings (I presume) per box can be stored via user profiles, though I've never really looked into it.

Can I get some clarifications on this? What are the pros/cons of centralizing the xbmc user directory?

[darkscout]

why not run mysql?

[noumenon]

Mysql works great, but artwork doesn't sync. Have to do that manually. But it allows for synced watched status and bookmarks, etc.


Noumenon

[darkscout]

Set this up on Cron:
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

It'll be much faster than trying to read over network.

[poofyhairguy]

Set this up on Cron:
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

It'll be much faster than trying to read over network.

I was just messing with that for the first time today. What I didn't like about Unison is that I have only one system that updates constantly (the bedroom HTPC so the updating status doesn't IR on my livingroom plasma) so two way syncing isn't needed.

What I worked out was to use cronned rsync to push the Thumbnail folder of my updating HTPC to my server, then another cronned rsync to push from my server to my main HTPC. This way in the future when I add more clients they can all sync from the server instead of a client.

It isn't perfect yet, but it is WAY better then storing the thumbnails on the server.

Great thread.

[Anastrophe]

I use a Thumbnails smb share from an OpenSolaris server that gets mounted by all my XBMClive and Windows clients (\home\user\.xbmc\userdata\Thumbnails on linux), along with MySQL.

It works fine for me and any client can manipulate the library and the changes along with artwork gets instantly reflected on all the other clients.

[xgamer99]

I'll look into setting up a MySQL database for the info.

But syncing the artwork is another matter. I could either mount it directly, or set up a cron that updates every now and then over the network (might help since wireless is slow).

This would be a good time to chime in that I wish the XBMC devs (or someone) would release some sort of server backend script that will work with the MySQL collection and retrieve the artwork and stuff. Having each HTPC pushing the updates it gets to the server and then the server pushing them back out is not really efficient. <_<

Also, what directories would I need to sync up? I don't really know where XBMC stores all of it's data...

EDIT: Also, if I store everything in a central database with MySQL, will I still be able to use user profiles to get different content? For example, have one generic user profile that uses the 'public' media source (/home/public/media/ or whatever) and have another user profile that adds some other sources on top of that (the generic /home/public/media/ plus stuff like /home/user/movies/ and /home/user/music/ etc.). With the MySQL database compensate for this?