What do the NAS options do?

[bcjenkins]

If I go in and enable samba in the server tab, it does not stick past a restart. What is this meant to do?

B

[schmots]

Why not let gentoo manage it?

rc-update add samba default

that command will have samba start everytime gentoo reboots.

[bcjenkins]

Thanks, not what I am talking about though.

B

[ChePazzo]

Has anyone tried sshfs?

I was looking to solve a different problem of storing my irreplaceable content (photos, home vids, etc) on a separate RAID server that was behind a second router, but accessible through authentication from pretty much anywhere.

The server is running Ubuntu (I haven't set up the RAID yet).

I played around with webDAV, but Vista didn't play nicely.
I played around with Samba, but I couldn't get Vista to play nicely outside of the router.
I played around with nfs, but Vista wouldn't play nicely unless I purchased something more than Basic (which came with the PC).

Then I discovered sftpdrive, which lets me mount a folder to a drive over SSH.
So far, this has worked beautifully! My Sage server mounts /var/media/pictures and /var/media/music as an sshfs mount. Vista maps a drive so I can point my screensaver at it.

Just curious how well video would work over such a connection.

anyone ever try?

Am I an idiot for trying to mount over SSH in the first place?

[jpappas]

Originally Posted by ChePazzo

Has anyone tried sshfs?

Yeah, I have run the client via SSH Port Forwarding with reasonable success (most firewalls allow SSH traffic, so it is a legit "piercing" technique)

Originally Posted by ChePazzo

I played around with Samba, but I couldn't get Vista to play nicely outside of the router.

SMB is terribly chatty. It does not work very well over the WAN (Hence the WAN accelerators/optimizers). Other protocols are designed for better WAN use.

Originally Posted by ChePazzo

I played around with nfs, but Vista wouldn't play nicely unless I purchased something more than Basic (which came with the PC).

I imagine that the windows NFS client is not too optimized given that MS has little motivation to make it much more than a hack. Plus, NFS is not great over the WAN either.

Originally Posted by ChePazzo

Then I discovered sftpdrive, which lets me mount a folder to a drive over SSH.

Yeah, for static file access, it will be fine, you could also enable compression on the connection, and that should allow you to get the native MPG file faster.

Originally Posted by ChePazzo

Just curious how well video would work over such a connection.

In a streaming scenario, I just tunnel the placeshifter. On windows, I use `putty` (using the same options below, configured via the GUI) and on Linux, I use the following command:
`ssh -2 -C -X -N -f \
-L 3535:localhost:3535 \
-L 31099:SAGE_IP:31099 \
SUSER@host.example.net`
This runs SSHv2 (-2) with compression (-C), X forwarding (-X), daemon mode (-N), prompt if entering background (-f) while forwarding port 3535 via localhost to SSH target (I run squid on the host so that I can browse internal sites), and port 31099 to sage for placeshifter. I have had good success with this, even over a Sprint EVDO connection.

Hope that helps!
John

[ChePazzo]

Actually, I think I posted this to the wrong list....

kind of. I am not directly tunneling (or maybe I am and don't realize it), but rather mounting the remote machine via sshfs-fuse:

SAGESERVER ~ #sshfs <user>@<fileserver>:./FileLib/Music /var/media/music

SAGESERVER ~ # df -h
Filesystem                           Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1                             37G  3.0G   32G   9% /  
/dev/sda1                            699G  570G  130G  82% /var/media
/dev/hda3                            196G  106G   90G  55% /var/media/tv
/dev/hdc1                            373G  336K  373G   1% /var/media2
sshfs#<user>@<host>:./FileLib/Music  954G     0  954G   0% /var/media/music
sshfs#<user>@<host>:./FileLib/Photos  954G     0  954G   0% /var/media/pictures

Of course, the available space is misread (the ssh drive is really a 400GB drive) . . . . But since I use the local machine for all recordings and remote machines just for storing/archiving media, it should work ok for me.

I haven't tried to stream video over the mount, yet (now that I think about it, I haven't tried to access the music either via Sage).

[ChePazzo]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Thanks, not what I am talking about though.

B

back on topic....

I think I know what you are asking and I've asked a few times myself. I haven't found anything in the user guide about that (as well as the other 'server' settings).

I did see a user post something to the effect that those settings are supposed to edit your server config for you so that you don't have to mess with Gentoo. My guess is that SageTV would like at some point to get the average user to purchase a prebuilt SageTV server already running Linux and the SageTV software and everything. If this customer has no interest in learning anything about Linux, he will be able to configure the necessary option on the box through the Sage interface much the way you configure a Linksys router out of the box.

Of course, this confuses some of us who have already configured Gentoo to do what we want and aren't sure exactly how changing these setting affects the server.

I would suggest that you open a bug on the 'not sticking past restart' issue. Is Samba running on your machine already? perhaps there is some conflict between how you've already configured your server VS how Sage is trying to configure it via this option.

[bcjenkins]

Thanks for the reply. What I am really trying to do is find a way for my Windows SageTV clients to have direct file access to the Linux server. As it sits right now all TV and videos seem to get transcoded to the Windows SageTV clients because they don't have direct access to the files. This creates a few headaches for me:

1) The server is transcoding all audio from any format to MP2. I lose DD5.1 AC3 on HD and MPEG movies.

2) The clients can't play ripped DVDs.

3) The server consumes more resources transcoding rather than pushing bits over the gigabit network.

The only potential solution I can see is for SageTV to upgrade their version of jcifs to the latest and utilize it for file io operations.

This brief excerpt from their site indicates it should be relatively easy to implement:

The SmbFile, SmbFileInputStream , and SmbFileOutputStream classes are analogous to the File, FileInputStream, and FileOutputStream classes so if you know how to use those it should be quite obvious how to use jCIFS provided you set any necessary properties (i.e. a WINS server) and understand the smb:// URL syntax.

Here's an example to retrieve a file:

import jcifs.smb.*;

jcifs.Config.setProperty( "jcifs.netbios.wins", "192.168.1.220" );
NtlmPasswordAuthentication auth = new NtlmPasswordAuthentication("domain", "username", "password");
SmbFileInputStream in = new SmbFileInputStream("smb://host/c/My Documents/somefile.txt", auth);
byte[] b = new byte[8192];
int n;
while(( n = in.read( b )) > 0 ) {
System.out.write( b, 0, n );
}

You can also read/write, delete, make directories, rename, list contents of a directory, list the workgroups/ntdomains and servers on the network, list the shares of a server, open named pipes, authenticate web clients ...etc.

Basically I would set up share names such as:

smb://server/share/dir

for TV/Video/Photos/Music

The question is if it is fast enough to handle streaming media. However, the upside is that all platforms which SageTV has product for have the capabilities to support SMB/CIFS file io and this would help them make a product much more flexible.


Am I the only Linux server user with Windows clients? Or is it the wife giving me a hard time about ripped DVDs which has me so sensitive? Personally, I am torqued about not having 5.1 or 6.1 in the theater room any longer unless I use matrixed audio.

B

[harrijay]

I completely understand your complaints and I am in the same boat. I originally started out with one machine a linux server to do HD and SD playback. I ran into the issue that I could not get 5.1 sound through Coax and also get stereo sounds depending on the channel it is playing. so I had some hardware laying around and now I have a headless linux server and a Windows sage client to do all of the HD and SD playback for me. I submited a feature request a while ago to get Ripped DVD playback to work with a a linux server but I have not heard anything yet. I have since ripped my DVD's and then ran it through VideoRedo to get it to work with 5.1 Sound on my MVP and the client. I originially bought the Linux server to get QAM working on my A180 but now that QAM appears to be working on the windows server I am thinking of moving it all to windows which I really do not want to do at all. Please someone from sage please let us know if this is ever going to happen. I love the linux server but I am losing the WAF very quickly and I might have to go the Windows route.

[bcjenkins]

See this post here

B