[Milhouse]

When using a shared MySQL database you need the same sources.xml on all clients - Kodi will not access content that does not have a matching source in the playback clients sources.xml (for "security" reasons). So even though you've set up a new network location in mediasources.xml, Kodi won't play that content if you don't have a source for that share configured on the client in sources.xml.

passwords.xml isn't documented very well, in fact there's almost nothing about it in the Kodi Wiki. However this post might give you an idea: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/...ntry244619 where you can see it's just a path substitution.

You would configure your user/password in passwords.xml so that they are substituted whenever accessing the configured url. This is better than adding the user/password in sources.xml because if you change your password (or user) any urls already stored in your library will become invalid as they will continue to reference the old password or user (and newly added urls will use the new user/password - total mess!)

passwords.xml will also be created automatically if accessing a password-protected share and entering a valid username/password, then ticking "Remember for this path".

Also note that anonymous access (where you don't specify a username or password) is NOT working in Kodi 18 with Samba4 (ie. not working in these LE builds) but then you should get an error when connecting to the share, rather than Kodi simply failing to play back content. The solution is to use authenticated access, adding the user/password in passwords.xml.

Edit: Windows machines obviously don't use Samba (as in samba.org, the Linux solution) - they have their own SMB clients without many of the restrictions/limitations of Samba. So anonymous access and network browsing almost certainly will work for Kodi on Windows, but won't work in these LE9 builds that use Samba4.