WHS Vail - Access to shares

[rmac321]

I set up a test pc with Vail on it. My SageTV is still on an XP box. I can't seem to get SageTV to access the shares on the Vail box. Has anybody else tried and succeeded or failed?

I think I've pre-empted the usual suspects:
Yes, every other computer on the network can see the shares by both ip and by \\server\share
Yes, my Sage Service uses a specific user and password. (SageUser)
Yes, I made a user called SageUser inside Vail with the same password.
Yes, I even created a SageUser account directly on the server from RDP
Yes, I tried to directly specify the share name when browsing didn't work
Yes, I tried turning on Guest Access.

Yes, I changed the workgroup name on the Sage Server to match the Vail server since you can't change the workgroup in Vail, but then my extender wouldn't talk to the Sage Server. Before I waste a bunch of time changing the workgroup name on all the various attached devices, I figure I better check in here. I don't think this is the problem as my daughter has a test WHS 1 box she is playing with and we can see the files on it and we never changed the workgroup on it to match the Sage Server.

I'm probably forgetting something stupid, so please point it out to me.

[bialio]

It works fine for me. Have you tried logging into the Vail Dashboard as the SageUser? Just to make sure that works?

[gplasky]

This has worked for some to change the workgroup name. But it may need to be done sooner after the initial install than later and definitely before installing the connector software. ANd if your SageTV server is XP you may need to install the connector software before accessing the shares. You won't see them in My Network but you should be able to type in the UNC path.

Use Remote Desktop Connection and connect to the server
Start > Right-click Computer > Manage
Under Roles Summary section, click Remove Roles on the right side
Click Next
Uncheck Active Directory Certificate Services and click Next
Click Remove
Click Close and Yes when asked to restart


Connect to the server again ( wait for the removal window to appear )
Click Close to close the Removal Results window (You can close the Server Manager if you want but we'll be coming back here in a minute)
Start > right-click Computer > Properties
Click Change Settings in the Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings
Click the Change button
Input your desired workgroup name and click OK
Click OK twice, Close and then Restart Later


Go back to Server Manager
Under Roles Summary section, click Add Roles on the right side
Click Next
Select Active Directory Certificate Services and click Next
Click Next
Ensure Certification Authority is checked
Click Next three times
Select Use existing private key and Select an existing private key on this computer
click Next
Select your private key (which should look something like SERVERNAME-CA) and click Next five times
Click Install
Click Close when done - Restart

Gerry

[rmac321]

Originally Posted by bialio

It works fine for me. Have you tried logging into the Vail Dashboard as the SageUser? Just to make sure that works?

I'm not able to test that since I don't have any Connectors set up yet. When using an RDP connection it doesn't ask for your credentials to open a Dashboard connection. Since all the rest of the computers are already connected to my existing WHS 1 Server I've been RDP'ing in or working from keyboard and monitor on the server itself.

I did verify that when logged on as the Sage user on the SageServer that I could read/write to the shares on the Vail server, so the permissions, username and password all seem to be ok. i just verified that I can access those shares from the HD200 in standalone mode as well.

I will note that a user created through the dashboard does not have sufficient credentials to RDP into the Vail server.

FWIW, I created a user with same name, same password and administrator priveleges from Control Panel-> Users, and that didn't help.

More details to come in a response to Gerry...
Thanks for the input

[rmac321]

Originally Posted by gplasky

This has worked for some to change the workgroup name. But it may need to be done sooner after the initial install than later and definitely before installing the connector software. ANd if your SageTV server is XP you may need to install the connector software before accessing the shares. You won't see them in My Network but you should be able to type in the UNC path.
Gerry

Gerry,
Thanks for the input. That worked great to change the workgroup, but it didn't fix my inability to see the Vail shares from SageTV. It did add an interesting quirk which may or may not be related. Now, if I have a uVNC connection open to the Sage server and an RDP connection open to the Vail Server, if I restart the Vail server, the Sage server screen changes from the desktop to a login screen. It reports that the Sage user is still logged in, but it requires re-entering credentials to get back to the desktop. I can't help but wonder if the Vail Server is trying to act like a domain based server and get a little too involved in the credentials of its clients.

Thanks for the input,
still more details to follow in a separate post...

[rmac321]

Could the fact that my Sage server is running on XP Home instead of XP Pro have anything to do with this?

Here are some various notes about my setup. Maybe someone will see something that I haven't.

My Sage server is running on XP-Home SP3.
The Sage server has a sage user with password.
Sage runs as a service using that sage user and password.
when logged on to the sage server and viewing files from Windows Explorer, the shares on my WHS 1 and my Vail server are accessible, readable and writable.

My WHS 1 server has a Sage user and password that were created from the Console and they match the Sage user and password on the Sage server.
When I add a share or change a share name, in order to add it to my import directories, I must temporarily turn on guest access. Despite a lot of valuable help and insight from Gerry and Greg (gplasky & GKusnick), no other method of tinkering with users, permissions, groups, etc. has been found that will make the shares visible initially. Once added, guest access is turned back off and the shares remain visible and import directory updates work properly. I strongly suspect this is a quirk of using XP-Home instead of XP-Pro.

My Vail server has a Sage user and password that were created from the Dashboard and they match the Sage user and password on the Sage server. No amount of tinkering with users, permissions, groups, etc. has yet allowed me to see the Vail shares from inside SageTV. I even created a user from Control Panel with the same user name and password and administrator privileges but still no go. I tried the WHS 1 trick of temporarily enabling guest access, but in Vail it didn't help.

The Vail shares are also readily accessible to my HD200 in standalone mode.

The only pace I cannot access these shares from, is from inside SageTV, so I'm stumped.

[rmac321]

Just in case anyone else has this problem now or in the future, I thought I'd post a follow-up to let you know of a fix. Knowing that SageTV must keep a record of the import directories, I checked the sage.properties file and sure enough, there they all were listed under the key <seeker/archive_directory>. I stopped the sage service, added the vail videos share at the end of the entry, saved the file, restarted the service and did an import scan. Since all my permissions were already configured, the diectory is now listed and recognized by SageTV.

For those that do this, the format is \\\\server\\directory,x;
The x looks to be a 3 bit code for which file types to scan. I set the bit to 1 which tells it to only scan for videos. 7 will tell it to scan for videos, music and photos. A little experimentation would determine whether 2 is the bit for music and 4 is for photos or the other way around.

[mr_lore]

Sorry for the thread hijack but, you guys running vail, do you think there will be a simple upgrade path to the release/final version from the beta? If I remember correctly WHS v1 went from beta to release with a simple upgrade process, maybe even a tiny hack...

Itching to try it but if I have to rebuild my whole box its not worth it.

[gplasky]

WHS is 32bit. Vail is 64 bit. That alone prevents any upgrade path. The bigger question is will there be an easy way to migrate the drives from a WHS pool to a Vail pool because it is done totally different below the OS. The only choice you may have is to just copy the data.

Gerry

[mr_lore]

Originally Posted by gplasky

WHS is 32bit. Vail is 64 bit. That alone prevents any upgrade path. The bigger question is will there be an easy way to migrate the drives from a WHS pool to a Vail pool because it is done totally different below the OS. The only choice you may have is to just copy the data.

Gerry

What I meant was if I install and use vail now, can I 'upgrade' or hack it to final/release/rtm version without reinstalling like whs v1

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by mr_lore

What I meant was if I install and use vail now, can I 'upgrade' or hack it to final/release/rtm version without reinstalling like whs v1

Oh.

There's no guarantee. ANd considering another peta is suppose to be released soon I would say no.

Gerry