[wisenheimer]

Okay, here's the skinny.

From completely 'OFF', I booted the PC. The lights on both external drive came on with the PC. XBMC fired up and I went to 'Videos' when I was at the main dashboard.

Inside 'Videos' were three icons: "Movies 1" (external drive #1), "Movies 2" (external drive #2) and "Add Source."

I moused over "Movies 1" and pressed "C". "Remove Source" was NOT an option. I tried the "C" press over "Movies 2". Again, "Remove Source" was NOT an option.

The first choice after the "C" press (the closest one to your instructions) said ""Remove Safely". I chose that for "Movies 1". The "Movies 1" drive disappeared from the main "Videos" page. I repeated the process for "Movies 2", and it, too, disappeared from the main "Videos" page.

I was now left with only one icon on the main "Videos" page; "Add Source".

At this point I felt like I was where I should be at the conclusion of your first set of directions. I proceeded to the second set.

I clicked "Add Source". I clicked "Browse". And here's where the hang up begins (or has been). The two external drives do no show up anywhere on that page. I went through each individual option and the is no link to either of the external drives.

This appears to be where I have been stuck. Obviously XBMC knows the drives are there, as I can navigate within them from the "Videos" page. But it will not see them for the purposes of adding them as a source.

Ideas?

[cowfodder]

Here

[wisenheimer]

Holy Hell. I just read that, and while I noticed its similarity to what solem posted earlier, it is beyond anything I understand.

This is the absolute first time I have ever touched anything related to Linux in my life, mostly because I have always heard how hard it is to understand and use. I have NO prior knowledge of anything Linux, whatsoever. I figured I would give XBMC a shot as it looks gorgeous the wiki called it an out-of-the-box experience.

If that page is any indication of the knowledge required to use XBMC, I suppose I am relegated to using my old-ass, no mkv playing, XP MCE 2005.

Would this be different if I was running XBMC through Windows?!

[solem]

Don't be alarmed. This is probably your last step towards nirvana.

Edit fstab and you should be good to go. I'm assuming your drives are NTFS?

[wisenheimer]

Yeah?? I feel more like "Hey blind guy with one arm... remove this man's spleen".

Yes the drives are NTFS.

I read this article several times last night.

http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fstab.html

As I compare it to what you posted in #8, I have a few questions.

Original Post:

/dev/sda1 /media/myGdisk ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_EN.utf8 0 0

(if your G-disk is sda1)... "myGdisk" is just a folder you create in i.e. the media folder, so you can call it whatever you like. Hopefully XBMC will then show "myGdisk" as a addable source.

1. So /dev/sda1 is one of the external drives, yes? You wrote "if your G-disk is sda1" What is "sda1" and how would I go about finding that out? Will the second drive be the same? different?

2. According to the article, /media/myGdisk is the mounting point. I do not grasp that concept all too well. The article states, "Most distros create them under /mnt, but some (at least SuSE) under /media." Is the drive itself /media?

Additionally, what about this "myGdisk is just a folder you create in i.e. the media folder, so you can call it whatever you like." While I grasp that I can call myGdisk something else, the concept escapes me. Is this to say all my video files must be in a main folder on the drive called myGdisk (or other name)?

3. From the article, I understand that the third column deals with the file stream type. But why is there a "-3g" at the end. The article make no mention of this.

4. From the fourth column, I recognize defaults from the article (despite not knowing what it means) but ",locale=en_EN.utf8" might as well be Swahili.

I get columns 5 and 6.

[solem]

Let me just say that I'm no expert. It's just that I struggled with the same issues as you like a month or two ago, but all the answers are out there somewhere, on the big interwebs :p

1. Do a "sudo fdisk -l" (in console again). This should show you all disks connected to your system. I.e. /dev/sda is one device, and if it only has one partition it will be /dev/sda1. The tables has a "System" column showing you what filesystem the partition is, like HPFS/NTFS. When you know what your devices are called you're good to proceed.

2. Mounting point is just a folder you create. You probably have both a /mnt and /media folder, so you're free to choose where to mount your disks. Just make another folder within to seperate your disks. And no, shouldn't be a problem to have your movies on "root" level on your disks.

3. As far as I know ntfs-3g is just the latest way of dealing with NT filesystem mounting. You might have to install it though: "sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g"

4. It's not really important to know everything about this, but en_EN means english GB style, as opposed to en_US or whatever language you want. UTF8 is just a way to handle Unicode characters encoding. Not really sure if it's needed or how it affects the mounts.

[wisenheimer]

First off, thanks for the reply!

I think I can handle the "sudo fdisk -l" part, as that is how I found my sound card. Hopefully I can discern what is what.

Assuming I can find /media, how can I create another folder within? When I went to the console, it was just a black screen with white letters. I could see no GUI to make changes.

Similarly, how would I install "sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g"? Do I need a web connection for this, do I import the file from somewhere? This PC is not networked. It is a standalone connected to my HDTV.

[solem]

Yes, u need interwebs to install this.

Here r some basic commands to move around:

- ls (list function, like dir)
- cd (change dir, i.e. "cd /media")
- mkdir (make directory, i.e. "mkdir myDisk")

For the last one u probably have to do "sudo mkdir myDisk"

Question: If it's not connected to ur network how did u scrape movie info? .nfo's?

[wisenheimer]

I've never scraped. After I ripped my DVD collection, I went on the web and collected pics of the posters manually. I named each "folder.jpg" and dropped it into the respective folder.

I have a bad feeling that there is no way in hell I am going to pull this off.

But...

Let's do this one step at a time, if you don't mind.

I did the sudo fdisk -l at console.

My external drives are:
/dev/sdb HPFS/NTFS and
/dev/sdc HPFS/NTFS

I was able to get to /media with "cd /media". In it I entered "mkdir movies1" and then "mkdisk movies2". When I entered "ls" I could see both within the /media directory.

So far, so good... I think

I am going to ask my fstab question in a new post, as no one reading the title of this one would have any idea about where I am in all of this.

A BIG THANK YOU for all the help you folks have given me!!!!!