I'm looking to use Myth Video to play ripped DVD isos. I own all the DVDs, etc.

Anyway, here's what I'd like to do. I store the ripped DVDs on an external HD, which is plugged into a windows XP machine. I want to play those files using Myth Video. Is this possible? I've had no luck getting samba to work where I can see files on a windows machine.

Also, I can't seem to get the cover art and stuff into myth video. Any tips for that?

Thanks!

You'll need to get samba set up correctly to do that. I'd bet you are probably running into probems in the /etc/fstab file
format for a samba share should be:
//winxpipaddress/share /directorytomountshare cifs username=yourusernametoxpshare,password=yourpasswordtoshare, user=yourlinuxusername,noatime 0 0

ignore the space before user. I don't know why it's there
that should hopefully work for you

If you are using Ubuntu, another common problem is lacking the smbfs package. While it's not technically supposed to be required, it makes life easier in my opinion. Run apt-get install smbfs. Then mount -t cifs //serverip/share /mountpoint -o guest (if you allow guest access), otherwise use options similar to blackoper's fstab options.

You can also use Webmin to configure file sharing via a nice gui.

I agree on webmin, my main server is headless and configured through webmin exclusively

I installed smbfs last night and was able to briefly access the drive. Now I have to figure out this mounting thing. I'll also look into webmin tonight. Thanks for the help so far, I'm sure I'll need some more.

After I get samba figured out how do I get myth video to use the drive?

In my opinion the easiest way to set this up once you get smb working is to make a folder on your mythbox where videos will be ie.. /var/lib/mythtv/videos

Then make a folder in that directory for your removeable drive. ie /var/lib/mythtv/videos/removeable1

Set /var/lib/mythtv/videos as your mythvideo directory. This way you can add more removeable drives or locations later as removeable2 etc..

Mount your windows share as /var/lib/mythtv/videos/removeable1.

Now go to the video manger in the front end and all your videos under /var/lib/mythtv/videos will be imported. Select each video and choose search imdb to get the art.

This is the way i have mine setup. I have several removable units mounted under /var/lib/mythtv/video as well as some videos stored localy on the server. Whenever i remove a drive, i juist re-run the video manager to update my view.

Thanks for all the help everyone. It's working! I now have a simple DVD jukebox that even a child could figure out.