[tcman47]

I have my thumbnails dir shared between all my xbmc clients via symbolic links. Works great.

Are you sure you are creating the thumbnails directory at the correct level?
For example, when you open the symbolic link folder named "Thumbnails", you should see the 0-f,audio,video,programs subfolders. You shouldn't see another folder named "Thubmnails"

Also, when you say that XBMC creates another thubmnails directory when it starts up, what do you mean? If there is already a symbolic link dir where the thumbnail directory is supposed to be, then where does xbmc create the new one?

Yes I am seeing the 0-f, video, program, music subfolders inside of the thumbnails directory at the client via the symbolic link to the thumbs on my server.

XBMC is creating it in the same directory as the symbolic link thumbnails folder.

I am pretty sure I am doing everything correct, its just when xbmc 1st starts up it seems confused as to the thumbnails, i get movie fanart and thats about it, all other thumbs are either missing or weird snapshots of the movies

I will try again tonight with out my brother who was kind of confusing me last night, perhaps that might help :lol:

[tcman47]

Still can't get it to work, here is what I am doing;

Server
1. go into users/terry/appdata/roaming/xbmc/userdata/thumbnails and copy this folder to my M: drive which is shared and seen by my two clients machines over a 1gb wired network.

2. go back into users/terry/appdata/roaming/xbmc/userdata/thumbnails and rename the thumbnails directory to thumbnails.old

Client
1. go into users/terry/appdata/roaming/xbmc/userdata and rename thumbnails directory to thumbnails.old

2. I then go into windows explorer and map network to the location of thumbnails on the shared M: drive, I map it to drive Z:

3. I then go into users/terry/appdata/roaming/xbmc/userdata and create a symbolic link to the shared thumbnails folder by typing:

mklink /d Thumbnails Z:\Thumbnails


I then start up XBMC on the client and no thumbnails are appearing,e ven though the client machine can see the shared thumbnails folder M: in windows, for some reason XBMC is not seeing it.

I am running march 7th nightly build of Dharma 10.0, cirrus extended skin and windows 7.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
TC

[tcman47]

Still can't get it to work, here is what I am doing;

Server
1. go into users/terry/appdata/roaming/xbmc/userdata/thumbnails and copy this folder to my M: drive which is shared and seen by my two clients machines over a 1gb wired network.

2. go back into users/terry/appdata/roaming/xbmc/userdata/thumbnails and rename the thumbnails directory to thumbnails.old

Client
1. go into users/terry/appdata/roaming/xbmc/userdata and rename thumbnails directory to thumbnails.old

2. I then go into windows explorer and map a new network drive letter to the location of thumbnails on the shared M: drive, I map it to Z:

3. I then go into users/terry/appdata/roaming/xbmc/userdata and create a symbolic link to the shared thumbnails folder by typing:

mklink /d Thumbnails Z:\Thumbnails


I then start up XBMC on the client and no thumbnails are appearing, even though the client machine can see the shared thumbnails folder M: in windows, for some reason XBMC is not seeing it.

I am running march 7th nightly build of Dharma 10.0, cirrus extended skin and windows 7.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
TC

[bradvido88]

tcman47, That looks right to me. Can you post a debug log of when XBMC first starts up after you've created the symbolic link?

[tcman47]

tcman47, That looks right to me. Can you post a debug log of when XBMC first starts up after you've created the symbolic link?

I went through the procedure for debugging as followed here:

http://paulrae.com/2010/11/03/how-to-ena...g-in-xbmc/

but I cant get my debug log uploaded to pastebin, it hangs and when I go to use the copy to folder option it says its needs a folder location but there is nowhere to pick one.

Oh well, I will just go back to the manual method of updated my music library everytime I add another 10 pieces of artist art or so and thats to just remove the music source at the client and rescan.

[bradvido88]

but I cant get my debug log uploaded to pastebin, it hangs and when I go to use the copy to folder option it says its needs a folder location but there is nowhere to pick one.

You can just post you log here then, but be sure to put it between two CODE tags (click on the # above the text area in the advanced reply)

[devinepaul]

If you see a folder named Thumbnails in the userdata folder on the client computers then I am not sure where your problem is.

If you don't see a folder in your client user data after attempting to create the symbolic link follow the steps below to create the symbolic link.

Code:

in cmd prompt type:

cd AppData
cd Roaming
cd XBMC
cd userdata
enter

mklink /D Thumbnails Z:\Thumbnails

then go to Z:/Thumbnails and verify a folder named Thumbnails exists and has the same contents as your userdata folder found here:

users/terry/appdata/roaming/xbmc/userdata

[brimnac]

I realize this is a little older, but you may need to launch Command Prompt with Admin rights. LMK if you need help still.

[incentive]

ok does this thumbnail share for the use of

a) having already scrapped the folder on the server and all the info is there, the other say 'clients' when they add the source you dont have to scrap and re download again
it automatically picks them from the server as the mklink folder?

[banzai75x]

Does anyone experience any lag/performance issues using this approach? It seemed to me that my AppleTV2 was taking very long to pull the thumbnails from my server (over a minute). I was only using a view with 7 thumbnails/posters. I used pathsubstitution and my backbone is 10/100. Maybe that's why?