[ashleyj]

Goal: to share media from my external hdd with my raspbmc. Preferably able to send commands to play media from windows and android.

Resources: pi, ubuntu netbook (pangolin), windows 7 laptop, nexus 7, d-link router with shareport.

I seem to have exhausted the possibilities with the shareport. It seems mostly useless. On upnp some folders will load sporadically, but most folders have never loaded. Folders can be explored in a browser interface, but it is clunky and has very limited functionality.

My goal now is to mount the xhdd on the ubuntu netbook. I installed samba and the sharing looks like it works on the linux box. The folders show up on the windows machine, but I can't get access to the files on the windows machine. I checked options for sharing files and guest access.

I also can't seem to find a way to use the windows 7 machine to tell the pi to play network files. I can send youtube streams to it, but not network files. Ideally I would be able to navigate in explorer, right click and play on raspbmc. Yatse seemed promising, but the setup can't connect with the server.

All help is appreciated. I will try to answer further questions in a timely fashion.

[lleb]

slow down, sounds like you have a mess on your hands.

is the external HDD connected to the RPi, or to your Netbook?

You mentioned SAMBA running on your Netbook, but nothing about NFS or what is running on the RPi.

What commands are you trying to send to what system, be specific.

From the looks of it you have the following COMPUTERs, the router has nothing to do with anything as you are all LAN connected, i hope I am reading that you are on a LAN.

1. RPi running raspBMC.
1. Win7 box (no mention of what type of win7 this is... helps to know pro, home, ultimate, 32/64bit, etc...)
1. Ubuntu system
1. Android tablet (the Nexus 7), btw how do you like it? I just bought the Nexus 4 phone and am loving it.
1. external HDD EITHER connected to the Ubuntu system or to the RPi, need to know were it is.

I hope I am correct on the above hardware.

Ideally you would have the external HDD connected to a device other then the RPi, just for power reasons unless the external HDD is powered then it really will not matter if connected to the RPi or an other system.

XMBC seems to handle SAMBA rather well, but I have no clue how well it handles CIFS shares so I would NOT share it from the win7 system. Either connect it directly to the RPi, or to your Ubuntu system.

If you are ONLY wanting to issue "remote control" commands to XBMC then you need to properly enable and configure the web interface. This seems to work rather well as long as you set your RPi to a static IP and even better if you properly configure local DNS and use the domain name instead of the IP when browsing to it via your other systems.

ex: internal DNS points 10.10.10.100 to pi

in the web browsers or via the XMBC remote on the Android system you point to "pi" not to 10.10.10.100 without forgetting to add the :8080 port at the end. so pi:8080 would be what you enter. This will help resolve several issues especially with the mixed environment you have in your home.

*note* for the win7 box you will probably have to add that to the hosts file. this is a hidden file that can only be edited by the administrator not a regular user. The easiest way to do this is to find Wordpad, right click and run as administrator even if you have UAC disabled. the entry should look like the following:

Code:

10.10.10.100                     pi

Just place that at the end of the file, save and exit. if your Linux systems dont pick this up from your internal DNS (not sure if your d-link router can handle this for you or not) then you will also have to add that information to their /etc/hosts files as well. The format is the same; IP space DNS_name. very simple. Here is the /etc/hosts from my NFS server:

Code:

[ray@centos ~]$ cat /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1   localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4
::1         localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6
192.168.3.125    jackknife
192.168.3.       mylan
192.168.3.220    imac
192.168.3.150    win7
192.168.3.209    kayla
192.168.3.100    pi

As you can see very simple and easy to follow. If you are putting the external HDD on your Ubuntu system, then you will need to setup both NFS and SAMBA. The reason is simple, it is always better to have your OS function with files and shares that are NATIVE to the OS. Use your NFS share for the RPi and the Ubuntu system, not sure if android can access NFS or not. Then the Win7 box will access the exact same files via SAMBA.

I hope this is a start. again if you are just trying to issue remote commands, then configure the web interface and allow other systems and applications to issue commands and you should be set.

[ashleyj]

I have the HDD connected to the ubuntu netbook. The HDD is powered. But the pi is in the living room and I want as little hardware as possible in visible and high traffic areas.

Win7 Home Premium 32bit.

I figured out the web interface thing. So proud of myself.

On the Pi I am running rasbmc.

Commands: I want to use windows to tell pi to play files on ubuntu. I see how that needed to be explicated.

My dns server has ip's reserved for each device.

I will play with the local dns later. It doesn't seem important to this task. All my remotes are already pointed to the proper ip.

I don't well differentiate between LAN, AP, gateway, router. All devices are on the same subnet.

The problem that remains is -- How do I get the pi to see files on the xhdd.

Thx.