[ctawn]

For the SMB thing we can't do anything. As i have read Apple switched to SMB3 protocol in Yosemite. This is not supported by our used libsmbclient (which is 3rd party btw and not in our control)… All in all no matter how many users bitch about it - its not our fault and we can't fix it.

I'm sorry to hear this attitude, Memphiz. As you know, makers of software, especially operating systems, and especially Apple Co., excel in breaking things that work perfectly well. When you produce software to run on a major operating system, painful as it is, you have to make changes to fix things that get broken in such a way. (I speak from experience, it's frustrating as all hell.) So in this case, it's a choice of a) bitching at Apple for making that change, b) urging that 3rd party producer of libsmbclient to support SMB3, or c) finding or developing a new library that does work. Surely the specs are available. Apple may have no problem pushing everyone to adapt, but they wouldn't do it without providing the specs.

As you know, Kodi 15 removed AFP support completely. Why? AFP works perfectly well in connecting to remote shares even on an OS X server running OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) beta. With a caveat. It never worked on Kodi, and didn't work reliably on XBMC Gotham. For that reason I'm running XBMC Frodo on a Pivos DS box at the moment. And it connects beautifully to OS X 10.11 via AFP. No need for additional installs of server software like NFS or weird tweaks. Out of the box. As something really should.

If the team won't or can't fix SMB connectivity for current versions of OS X, consider putting back whatever AFP code was in Frodo. It works. Or at least until SMB3 can be supported. Thanks.

[Ned Scott]

AFP itself is fine, but the open source AFP client that we used was very buggy. Our guys looked for a replacement, and I think someone even tried to write their own, which is a big undertaking, but the end result was there isn't an open source replacement that is any better. The AFP client lived on life support in Kodi for several versions, with people wanting to remove it sooner. When Apple started to talk about migrating away from AFP, we figured it was time. We have a better chance at getting SMB from OS X working in Kodi, or better yet, helping users to set up NFS (wiki).

[Memphiz]

Its not an attitude. Its all i can give you. (no one of your smart sounding developers even tried to join the team kodi for getting some real backup in the osx or ios section. All you guys do is telling me how to do it right. Well i can't...).

And FYI - AFP only worked for 50% of the users when using the 32bit builds of xbmc/kodi. As we stopped publishing builds for 32 bit its one more reason to drop that afp beast (and yes i had about 12 patches in the afp library and it still was buggy like hell and the time i had to put into that crappy code was just not worth it).

Next you tell me we shouldn't have stopped 32bit builds in the first place - yeah ok ...

[ctawn]

Thanks for the replies on this. First of all, I'm a shitty-ass part-time developer working in an obsolete code base that I try to patch for compatibility as best I can. So I'm not holding back in contribution; I would help if I could. I don't fault the team for removing the AFP code. I'm only saying that whatever the code was for Frodo still works fine on my end. I gather that the 32-bit build thing makes a difference here. But that runs on the Pivos box I currently have, so I'm really fighting with the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" perspective. But I know it will all eventually break.

Ned, glad to hear there is some prospect of getting SMB from OS X working in Kodi. That the towel has not been thrown in on that front. I don't regard helping users set up NFS has a better alternative. It may work, but many of us prefer to minimize the extraneous system-level software installed on our systems. No doubt when it comes to it I will cave on that, as I do out of necessity for many things. But it's much better not to have to do that for all kinds of stability reasons.

Thanks again.

[codyairman]

Just got this working with macbook pro, el capitan, openelec.
on mac
system preferences, share relevant folder.
system preferences users > guest user > tick allow login sharing. (this was my stumbling block)
on Kodi
video >files> add > samba share >mac > it now shows the folder without error message.
Thanks for support, just thought I would let you know this works.

[VonMagnum]

Just got this working with macbook pro, el capitan, openelec.
on mac
system preferences, share relevant folder.
system preferences users > guest user > tick allow login sharing. (this was my stumbling block)
on Kodi
video >files> add > samba share >mac > it now shows the folder without error message.
Thanks for support, just thought I would let you know this works.

You're a freaking GENIUS man.

That fixed both NFS and SMB (the official Apple SMB3 one, not SMBuP) on my 2012 Mac Mini Server running 10.11.1 El Capitan for my new Amazon Fire TV Stick running Kodi 15.2 Isengard. It wouldn't do squat until now. Now BOTH work (NFS did work fine on my AppleTV Gen1 running XBMC Eden and SMB worked with SMBuP rather than Apple, but now I wonder if that change would have gotten SMB2 working as well. Maybe I'll test that later.)

EDIT: OK, it's not working as well as I thought. Detection of the shares comes and goes now. It'll ZeroConf recognize one and not the other and then the other way around or both or neither. It seems to be completely random whether it spins or shows up. But if you try to click on a share that is set up and it's NOT there on that time, it LOCKS UP. I have no idea what the problem is. At least Eden was consistent. I'm going to try rebooting the Mac next.

EDIT 2: If I exit Kodi on the Fire TV and restart it, I reliably get access through Zeroconf to both SMB (SMB3 on El Capitan) and NFS (again on El Capitan). Once I add say a video directory that video directory then works fine. But as soon as I go to add ANOTHER directory, it gives the endless busy signal. If I exit and restart, I can add another directory, etc. and the cycle begins again. It's maddening, but it works. Once those directories are in place, they FUNCTION just fine. Starting and stopping movies or whatever doesn't lock anything up. It's only ZeroConf that seems to take a dump for some unknown reason. OS X SMB only shows up under Zeroconf. If I boot my old Windows computer, SMB shows up there under SMB Workgroup as you'd expect (I've never seen SMB show up under workgroup on any Mac with any SMB version ever, not even with the old SMB as far as I can recall. It's always been under Zeroconf). Oddly, Windows has no trouble seeing OS X via SMB, even WindowsXP on any version of OS X.

The question then becomes whether to use SMB or NFS. Zeroconf takes a dump on both, so it would be a royal PITA to set up both for comparison other than perhaps a main dumb directory to test files. I tried Doctor Who in HD on NFS and Tron Legacy on SMB and both ran smoothly at 1080p (much better than the Netflix viewer that comes with Fire TV that drops a frame here and there unlike Apple TV 2/3's Netflix App which runs smooth as can be on the same shows). So I guess I'll be keeping an ATV around for Airplay, Netflix and the occasional iTunes rental and using Fire TV (if I can ever finish setting it up) for Kodi and Amazon Prime.

I used to have some issues with SMB (the SMBuP version) with Eden and OS X and it didn't rear it's head for some time so it would suck to set it up now and have issues later. OTOH, I'd like to use SMB over NFS because OS X will go to sleep with NFS in use, but not with SMB in use (and can wake up for SMB and not NFS as well).

EDIT 3: Hmmm, it seems if I go to a newly added directory after adding it and then back out and add another one it keeps working (as opposed to just adding directory after directory). That will speed things up considerably. It's still strange, though.

[VonMagnum]

Ok, as it turns out, I think I had a hard drive starting to go bad (no data lost, but everything was starting to go wonky from networking from XBMC or Kodi including my formerly rock solid ATV Gen1 device running Eden to iTunes stuttering and doing other odd things. I switched to my backup drive and everything is smooth again and seemingly stable. ZeroConf still seems flaky from Kodi, but it never was 100% non-flaky.

SMB (Apple's SMB3) now seems 100% (so far) stable. No more pauses or other weird behaviors thus far. Given some have said it doesn't work right with Kodi, that doesn't seem to be the case here now that I know my hard drive was seemingly the culprit, but a few hours isn't much time to test for any odd variance. NFS seems fine again, also, but at the moment seems to be having ZeroConf issues as well (I don't know if my router could be related to that; I've seen odd router interactions before; I should probably try resetting it seeing it hasn't been reset in probably 2 years now).

Airplay is working fine from iTunes (audio and video) to Kodi 15.2 on the FireTV, but my iOS9 devices do not work (as most already know).

[systemoff]

Just got this working with macbook pro, el capitan, openelec.
on mac
system preferences, share relevant folder.
system preferences users > guest user > tick allow login sharing. (this was my stumbling block)
on Kodi
video >files> add > samba share >mac > it now shows the folder without error message.
Thanks for support, just thought I would let you know this works.

That's it!!! Thanks a lot!

[Akshunhiro]

Big thanks to wrxtasy for continued support.

This had me tearing my hair out for quite some time and I've been putting up with uPnP but the whole on/off to refresh folders was getting too much.

Finally, the whole ordeal was resolved by enabling the guest account access to shared folders...

Thanks all!

[VonMagnum]

You don't need a guest account, just make sure your media files have permissions set for "everyone" set to READ ONLY and you're good. Click on the little tool icon and tell it to apply to ALL media files recursively. Done.

[wrxtasy]

Google Chrome is a bitch on my iMac when saving files. It sets saved files with permissions for "everyone" to "no access" and then you cannot access these files from Kodi. Reset them to "Read Only" and you are good to go

Took me ages to figure out that bloody problem with Google Chrome saving stuff !
Safari and Firefox have no such permission file saving issues.

[JxPx]

Just got this working with macbook pro, el capitan, openelec.
on mac
system preferences, share relevant folder.
system preferences users > guest user > tick allow login sharing. (this was my stumbling block)
on Kodi
video >files> add > samba share >mac > it now shows the folder without error message.
Thanks for support, just thought I would let you know this works.

You're a freaking GENIUS man.

That fixed both NFS and SMB (the official Apple SMB3 one, not SMBuP) on my 2012 Mac Mini Server running 10.11.1 El Capitan for my new Amazon Fire TV Stick running Kodi 15.2 Isengard. It wouldn't do squat until now. Now BOTH work (NFS did work fine on my AppleTV Gen1 running XBMC Eden and SMB worked with SMBuP rather than Apple, but now I wonder if that change would have gotten SMB2 working as well. Maybe I'll test that later.)

EDIT: OK, it's not working as well as I thought. Detection of the shares comes and goes now. It'll ZeroConf recognize one and not the other and then the other way around or both or neither. It seems to be completely random whether it spins or shows up. But if you try to click on a share that is set up and it's NOT there on that time, it LOCKS UP. I have no idea what the problem is. At least Eden was consistent. I'm going to try rebooting the Mac next.

EDIT 2: If I exit Kodi on the Fire TV and restart it, I reliably get access through Zeroconf to both SMB (SMB3 on El Capitan) and NFS (again on El Capitan). Once I add say a video directory that video directory then works fine. But as soon as I go to add ANOTHER directory, it gives the endless busy signal. If I exit and restart, I can add another directory, etc. and the cycle begins again. It's maddening, but it works. Once those directories are in place, they FUNCTION just fine. Starting and stopping movies or whatever doesn't lock anything up. It's only ZeroConf that seems to take a dump for some unknown reason. OS X SMB only shows up under Zeroconf. If I boot my old Windows computer, SMB shows up there under SMB Workgroup as you'd expect (I've never seen SMB show up under workgroup on any Mac with any SMB version ever, not even with the old SMB as far as I can recall. It's always been under Zeroconf). Oddly, Windows has no trouble seeing OS X via SMB, even WindowsXP on any version of OS X.

The question then becomes whether to use SMB or NFS. Zeroconf takes a dump on both, so it would be a royal PITA to set up both for comparison other than perhaps a main dumb directory to test files. I tried Doctor Who in HD on NFS and Tron Legacy on SMB and both ran smoothly at 1080p (much better than the Netflix viewer that comes with Fire TV that drops a frame here and there unlike Apple TV 2/3's Netflix App which runs smooth as can be on the same shows). So I guess I'll be keeping an ATV around for Airplay, Netflix and the occasional iTunes rental and using Fire TV (if I can ever finish setting it up) for Kodi and Amazon Prime.

I used to have some issues with SMB (the SMBuP version) with Eden and OS X and it didn't rear it's head for some time so it would suck to set it up now and have issues later. OTOH, I'd like to use SMB over NFS because OS X will go to sleep with NFS in use, but not with SMB in use (and can wake up for SMB and not NFS as well).

EDIT 3: Hmmm, it seems if I go to a newly added directory after adding it and then back out and add another one it keeps working (as opposed to just adding directory after directory). That will speed things up considerably. It's still strange, though.

@codyairman "Thanks for the post. That was exactly my issue after upgrading from snow leopard to el capitan.

@VonMagnum " I had the same issue with zeroconf on my fire tv box as well. I ended up adding my shares through Kodis SMB option via direct IP address and I never have any issues. If my drives aren't spun up when accessing for the first time during the day, Kodi will give me a time out, but then right away be able to access the share. Kind of annoying, but works. Cheers

[mbriody]

Well unfortunately none of the solutions above have made NFS or SMB work for me.

I just did a clean OpenElec install v6.0.0 (Kodi 15.2). I can see the Mac (running latest El Capitan) in zeroconf as an SMB share but clicking on it does nothing i.e. it doesn't expand the share. I've done all of the settings for guest account and sharing that have been posted.

I'd be happy with NFS but I cannot see the Mac via NFS at all, either via zeroconf or NFS within Kodi. I tried running the nfsd process as described above, no change.

The odd thing is that I *can* see and access the Mac perfectly via SMB from my Synology NAS. And I can access this share from within Kodi! But this workaround is obviously dependent on the NAS. But it does demonstrate that SMB is working on the Mac. If only I could access it directly from Kodi...

One query - where I setup shared drives and folders on the Mac I only see my login account, "everyone" and something I think called "system administrators" i.e. there's no explicit entry for a "guest" account. Is this correct?

[VonMagnum]

@VonMagnum " I had the same issue with zeroconf on my fire tv box as well. I ended up adding my shares through Kodis SMB option via direct IP address and I never have any issues. If my drives aren't spun up when accessing for the first time during the day, Kodi will give me a time out, but then right away be able to access the share. Kind of annoying, but works. Cheers

Yeah, I added both shares through the IP list window instead of selecting ZeroConf and what not and that works every time. The only trick was figuring out what to put in the entry so it works correctly (not obvious the first try since I don't think it was meant to be used that way). After I added a Broadcom card to my old AppleTV, I went back and added Crystal HD driver support for XBMC Eden in the FrontRow version of XBMC Eden and that version of XBMC works 100% of the time with ZeroConf configuration of NFS and the like (SMB requires SMBuP in that older version, though so I use NFS since the newer version of Kodi only seems to work right with SMB3 here).

@nbriody,

I've never had any trouble with NFS on any version of XBMC or Kodi working (although ZeroConf doesn't always work right on the newer Kodi versions; I think OpenElec worked so far though). Adding the IP address manually from the menu where you can select ZeroConf works best with the newer Kodi (100% every time). The only way NFS wouldn't work is if you don't have it set up correctly to begin with.

Newer Kodi (including OpenElec) works with SMB3 (El Capitan's own SMB share; SMBuP did NOT work at all here with the newer Kodi but does work with older versions and XBMC), but newer Kodi doesn't often work right with ZeroConf for some unknown reason. There's obviously a bug there (since older XBMC works 100% of the time), but good luck finding a developer willing to acknowledge it, let alone look into it (the mantra around here is fix it yourself; otherwise shut up).

I think MrMC has at least some potential to work better for OS X since it's now charging money for it. In my experience, greed leads to far better support for programs than any "selfless" open source project since money motivates people to listen to others (so they can make more money in the future) where they otherwise wouldn't give a flying crap. I mean we haven't seen video (M4V/MKV) ID Tagging added in 8 years time despite the fact that the music ID tag reader can read the video file information if you just rename in (i.e. wouldn't take a lot to modify it to read video tags) and yet it still doesn't appear because no developer cares about that feature, only Apple users that have large tagged libraries already. But how much do you want to bet it appears in MrMC in the future now that people are paying for it and requesting it so that it works better with AppleTV? I'd give it 1000x better odds than the feature appearing in Kodi first. Money motivates in ways that working for free never will. Maybe the features will get passed back to Kodi in time as well, but my money would be on MrMC fixing OS X related problems long before any other version.

[mbriody]

Thanks, will try adding the IP for NFS. You mention adding this under Zeroconf. Any reason to do it there rather than under NFS? Or does it not matter?