2017-12-27, 04:33
Got my wife a new win10/1703 laptop for Christmas and was setting it up. Threw a win x32 nightly (1219) on it to see how it worked (works fine but had a glitch).
My network environment is a primary LAN on which most clients and NAS are ethernet hardwared. The clients / NAS use simple SMB folder sharing and name resolution via a single workgroup (no homegroup nor domain involved). This LAN is on net 192.168.22.nnn. I was using Wifi while setting up the new PC and I have a wifi extender setup as an access point. The extender (Netgear) doesn't have the best documentation but it seems to default as a gateway/router (i.e., not bridged) so it creates its own net that happens to be 192.168.1.nnn that I guess uses NAT to forward traffic to the existing net.
Windows file explorer "network" node is able to see / get names from shares on both networks and I could enter my credentials and access all the file shares.
In Kodi, I could add a music share but when setting it up, using file browser dialog "windows smb" didn't see my NAS or other computers. Instead I used the "add network location" option to specify the NAS using the IP address and using that I was able to add the share as music source and scan it the library. (As an aside, I opened a cmd prompt and did a NET VIEW and it only returned computers on the access point's LAN. Don't know why windows file explorer is "more powerful".)
So next I attempted to set the artist info folder in the media/music settings. But when the file browser dialog is launched here, there is no option for "add network location" so I couldn't add the artist info folder. So my first question is "Why isn't "add network location" available from here?"
I thought I might work around the problem disconnecting from the access point and instead connecting to the main LAN wifi, which I did. I could now set the artist info folder. Having done that, I reconnected to the access point. When I tried to refresh an artist, I got error in log that artistname has no path, nfo not found. So that was a fail. I then thought to try the file manager, to see if I could at least access the folder. File manager brought up the file browser dialog, and in this case I did get the "add network location" and I could then add the shared folder as a file source. After I did this, I could go back to the media/music settings and now in the file browser dialog the file source (i.e., the artist info folder) was available as an option that could be selected. After doing that now I could refresh an artist and the nfo file was found. So this is a valid workaround, but my question is "Why does this work?".
This is kind of a one-off issue, but in general it seems like adding a source -- either a media source or file source -- provides additional capability via file browser that isn't available when attempting to add an artist info folder. And having a defined source provides additional capability to use those sources outside of the expected ones.
scott s.
.
My network environment is a primary LAN on which most clients and NAS are ethernet hardwared. The clients / NAS use simple SMB folder sharing and name resolution via a single workgroup (no homegroup nor domain involved). This LAN is on net 192.168.22.nnn. I was using Wifi while setting up the new PC and I have a wifi extender setup as an access point. The extender (Netgear) doesn't have the best documentation but it seems to default as a gateway/router (i.e., not bridged) so it creates its own net that happens to be 192.168.1.nnn that I guess uses NAT to forward traffic to the existing net.
Windows file explorer "network" node is able to see / get names from shares on both networks and I could enter my credentials and access all the file shares.
In Kodi, I could add a music share but when setting it up, using file browser dialog "windows smb" didn't see my NAS or other computers. Instead I used the "add network location" option to specify the NAS using the IP address and using that I was able to add the share as music source and scan it the library. (As an aside, I opened a cmd prompt and did a NET VIEW and it only returned computers on the access point's LAN. Don't know why windows file explorer is "more powerful".)
So next I attempted to set the artist info folder in the media/music settings. But when the file browser dialog is launched here, there is no option for "add network location" so I couldn't add the artist info folder. So my first question is "Why isn't "add network location" available from here?"
I thought I might work around the problem disconnecting from the access point and instead connecting to the main LAN wifi, which I did. I could now set the artist info folder. Having done that, I reconnected to the access point. When I tried to refresh an artist, I got error in log that artistname has no path, nfo not found. So that was a fail. I then thought to try the file manager, to see if I could at least access the folder. File manager brought up the file browser dialog, and in this case I did get the "add network location" and I could then add the shared folder as a file source. After I did this, I could go back to the media/music settings and now in the file browser dialog the file source (i.e., the artist info folder) was available as an option that could be selected. After doing that now I could refresh an artist and the nfo file was found. So this is a valid workaround, but my question is "Why does this work?".
This is kind of a one-off issue, but in general it seems like adding a source -- either a media source or file source -- provides additional capability via file browser that isn't available when attempting to add an artist info folder. And having a defined source provides additional capability to use those sources outside of the expected ones.
scott s.
.
