Re: [PLUG] Tried of Windows...

[Michael Leone <turgon@mike-leone.com>]

On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Grabowy, Chris <chris.grabowy@lmco.com> wrote:
> I have two XBMC Live boxes each hooked up to their own TV that I use to my
> watch and listen to my media that resides on a “file server”.

I use XBMC on Win 7 Home (came pre-installed on a Dell Inspiron I
bought for this purpose), running XBMC 11 (Eden) which connects to a
Windows Home Server 2011 running on an Atom PC (ditto)  as a file
share, which has 4 drives. Mine Just Works.

Maybe it's the XBMC Live that is causing the issue? Can you see if the
same thing happens if you actually install XBMC on a one of those
boxes? Or have you tried a different Live distribution, and see
whether you can connect with Samba from it, and whether it drops? That
should tell you if it's your file server, or the XBMC Live, that
causes the disconnects.

>
>
>
> The “file server” is an old Windows 7 dual core Atom low power PC.  I added
> a couple of extra NTFS hard drives to that PC and now it holds all of my
> media.
>
>
>
> For past couple of months the XBMC’s (Linux based) are rarely able to
> connect to that Win7 box to access the media.  On occasion for some reason
> it works.  I have been fiddling with the network, firewall and file sharing
> options in Windows 7, but nothing seems to have permanently solved the
> problem.
>
>
>
> Originally when I was setting up the “file server” I decided to keep it
> Windows 7  based since the drives were NTFS (at the time I was not sure that
> Linux could do NTFS), and I was using another SATA card (Syba SATA II card,
> not sure Linux could use that card) to support more drives.  Frankly, it was
> just quicker and easier to slap the drives in there and it was up and
> available.  The drives are not RAIDed.  Eventually when the price of drives
> fall back to where they should be then I will take a look at striping or
> mirroring.
>
>
>
> It appears that my Windows 7 desktop can get to the file server with no
> issues.  Whenever one of the XBMC boxes had a problem accessing it then I
> drop out of XBMC into Linux command line and I was able to ping the file
> server.  I attempted to find a Samba log somewhere but I could not find any.
>
>
>
> At this point I am just feed up with the file server.  I found articles on
> the net that seem to indicate that Windows 7 file sharing doesn’t play very
> nicely with Linux.  I just want to replace Windows 7 with some version of
> Linux and see how well that will work.  I assuming that Ubuntu is a good
> choice.
>
>
>
> This morning when it failed yet again my wife gave me the evil look and said
> fix it, and so now I have a project this weekend.
>
>
>
> So my questions are….which version of Linux for a simple file server?  Any
> gotchas?  Any thoughts?  I’ll take any advice.  I want to make this weekend
> project go smoothly as possible and solve this silly problem once and for
> all.  Ideally, I just want to install Linux over Windows and then
> reconfigure the XBMCs.
>
>
>
> Hopefully all that babbling made sense…
>
>
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-- 

"I look back at the way I used to look at life
Soft, white dreams with sugar coated outside
It was great, so great
Young and innocent days"
                    "Young and Innocent Days", The Kinks
___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
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