I have a media server, Win 7, and 4 clients runing Kodi on various OSes. My main setup has a RPi2 with OpenELEC so it has the most up to date library. Can I share that library using UPnP or do I need to run Kodi on the server machine. Maybe this does not make sense but just want to avoid the media stream coming from the server to the main RPi2 than to the client requesting if I share the library form the PRi2.
If I understand you correctly, it sounds like you're mixing library sharing with source sharing.
The library includes a path to the source files. The clients get that library (via UPnP, mysql, whatever) and then follow the path to the media files.
So... no, you don't need Kodi on the server unless that's the machine that's hosting the central library database. In your instance, you should be able to share the library from the OE machine and all the other clients will then go directly to the server for the source files.
The only hesitation I have is protocols and paths, and I think these are universal enough to be transparent on a LAN, i.e. Kodi has NFS and SMB clients built in so you're not dependent on the OSes support for those, and a flat LAN segment means you have no different routes from client A to server X versus client B to server X. In other words, the path SMB://hostname/path/to/file is universally-understood across all platforms.
(2015-03-02, 20:18)ams123 Wrote: [ -> ]Found answer here.
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=149489
Cannot delete post.
It should be noted that my original answer in that thread turned out to be incorrect. When you use something like NFS or SMB, then Kodi will send the path over UPnP and not double the bandwidth being used.