Kodi Community Forum

Hi, I'm running 5 OpenELEC boxes, and I'm converting them all to use a shared MySQL DB.

I've followed the wiki and setup the DB, and used a Windows XBMC to populate all my sources, and scrape all my content.
I'm now ready to switch the OpenELEC boxes over to using the MySQL DB instance.

1) I did not see any instructions on what to do with sources.xml? In addition to copying advancedsettings.xml to all boxes, do I also need to copy sources.xml to every box, or will they pick the sources up from the DB?

- I'd like to keep the DB up to date, but have the player boxes go to sleep. Since the MySQL DB is up 24/7, can I run a XBMC instance on the MySQL server box, and install the XBMC Library Update addon, that will keep the DB fresh, and any player box that wakes up will not need to rescan content? If so, what do I do with sources.xml on player boxes, i.e. let them use the DB with existing content, but not try to update the entries?

P.

Technically no, sources.xml doesn't need to be copied, though it doesn't do any harm to include it.

Without a sources.xml, the clients will only be able to play the media that is already present in the MySQL database (ie. that which is scraped in by the Windows machine). Without a sources.xml, your non-Windows clients won't be able to perform any library scans (which may be desirable), or browse your sources using the File Browser (again, potentially desirable).

As for running an XBMC instance on the MySQL server box - possibly, it depends on what OS your MySQL server is using (is this on a seperate NAS or your Windows PC?). There is a version of "XBMC Server" in development, but it's something you will need to build yourself and keep updated.

Another option is to buy a Raspberry Pi for $35, stick OpenELEC on a 256MB SD card, mount /storage over NFS or CIFS to your MySQL server, power it from a spare USB port on MySQL server and run the Pi headless (no HDMI, IR receiver or keyboard - just an ethernet connection) and use the Pi to manage your library. Much easier to keep updated, no special build required. In such a setup, only the Pi "scraper" would require a sources.xml file, all other players can do without.

Ok, got it, thank you.

A headless XBMC would be great for me, run as a service on my file server, OpenELEC XBMC frontends just do playback, all the scraping and serving done by the server.

P.