[Steini]

Since he only has a openelec box I was hoping to skip the mysql server there.

What I will try is to use pathsubstitution since that is only a few lines of xml which I know works.

Then I will try to open the mysql server over the internet (with some security tweaks like only listen to my parents IP addres

The Webdav works fine, but we are both on 50mb/s links which is more than enough

It will be interesting to see how the MySQL database holds up over the internet rather then local.

Also pathsubs are probably the easiest solution if using the single MySQL database.

I went with openvpn for the mysql connection and the performance is really good. I made a really limited vpn that only has access to the mysql server and initiate the connection on the openelec box using autostart.sh - I have tried restarting the router, pulling the ethernet and everything reconnects perfectly when the network comes back up - no restarts necessary.

Since Samba over vpn is too slow I use pathsubstitution and serve the actual content over webdav. Here is the relevant part of the advancedsettings.xml - My setup decided to include the username and password for music but not for movies so I had to substitute both:

Code:

<pathsubstitution>
          <substitute>
                <from>smb://USERNAME:PASSWORD@IPADDRESS/</from>
                <to>HTTPS://USERNAME:PASSWORD@IPADDRESS/webdavxbmc/</to>
          </substitute>
         <substitute>
            <from>smb://IPADDRESS/</from>
                <to>HTTPS://USERNAME:PASSWORD@IPADDRESS/webdavxbmc/</to>
                </substitute>
    </pathsubstitution>

The next step is to set some rules so that my parents cannot change the master database.

I guess the easiest would be to limit my parents mysql user to read only for most tables / views - only give it write access to watched flags

Thanks again for your great tutorial !

Ps one afterthought - how future-proof are we when Helix will come out?