[lockdown571]

So I'm having some intermittent issues accessing shares on my WHS 2011 from an XBMC client running Windows 7. Occasionally when I try to play a video in XBMC, I get a dialog saying "Remote Share: Path not found or invalid." The really annoying part is this only happens occasionally, so it's difficult to troubleshoot. I suspect this is an issue with sharing and permissions. My question is, what's the best way to setup sharing and permissions between a WHS 2011 machine and XBMC on Windows 7?


When I originally setup my desktop computer, I think I just installed the WHS launchpad application and then added this user to the WHS dashboard. On the XBMC clients, I would prefer not installing the launchpad application (although I of course can if it's necessary). Can I just share a folder on the WHS 2011 machine in the traditional way, i.e., right click the folder in Windows explorer, select sharing, and then grant the user (or 'everyone') read access? Then when I go into on a client XBMC, I should be able to add the share without entering a username or password, right?


Additionally, these shares are on a Flexraid pool. Flexraid has it's own section for setting up sharing, which I've never really understood. For the time being, I've just granted everyone read/write access to the folders in the pool through the flexraid client. I don't understand how Flexraid's sharing configuration fits into all of this though.

 

[Puwaha]

Im not a WHS 2011 user (I'm still on WHS v1) but on any other windows server I've had to enable the guest account and grant access to a share using the guest account for true anonymous sharing.

 

[StardogChampion]

If you go into Windows Explorer and double-click on the WHS machine, what do you see in there for shares?


You should be able to just use SMB to address the share like smb:\\WHS2011\share where WHS2011 is your WHS's machine name and share is the share name.


You can also map a network drive to a share as well. I do this on all my client PC, map the "Movie" share I created to M: so the scripts I use to synchronize the metadata all work no matter the client.

 

[gcoupe]



Quote:
Originally Posted by lockdown571  /t/1420104/how-do-i-properly-setup-...n-xbmc-client-running-windows-7#post_22216102


When I originally setup my desktop computer, I think I just installed the WHS launchpad application and then added this user to the WHS dashboard. On the XBMC clients, I would prefer not installing the launchpad application (although I of course can if it's necessary). Can I just share a folder on the WHS 2011 machine in the traditional way, i.e., right click the folder in Windows explorer, select sharing, and then grant the user (or 'everyone') read access? Then when I go into on a client XBMC, I should be able to add the share without entering a username or password, right?

Additionally, these shares are on a Flexraid pool. Flexraid has it's own section for setting up sharing, which I've never really understood. For the time being, I've just granted everyone read/write access to the folders in the pool through the flexraid client. I don't understand how Flexraid's sharing configuration fits into all of this though.

It's best not to bypass the WHS 2011 Dashboard by fiddling about with permissions in the Windows Explorer of the underlying Windows Server 2008 R2 of WHS. Things can get broken very easily. I don't use Flexraid myself, but I would be wary of using anything other than the Dashboard for setting up sharing.


If you're not going to use the Launchpad application on your xbmc client (and I can't blame you - Launchpad is bloatware, imo), then you need to create a Windows Credential on the client for access to the WHS Shared Folders.


On the client, go to the Control Panel/User Accounts and Family Safety/Manage Windows Credentials, and create a credential for a user that you have defined in your WHS 2011 Dashboard that has access to the folders used by XMBC.

 

[Puwaha]



Quote:
Originally Posted by gcoupe  /t/1420104/how-do-i-properly-setup-...n-xbmc-client-running-windows-7#post_22217560


It's best not to bypass the WHS 2011 Dashboard by fiddling about with permissions in the Windows Explorer of the underlying Windows Server 2008 R2 of WHS. Things can get broken very easily. I don't use Flexraid myself, but I would be wary of using anything other than the Dashboard for setting up sharing.

It's the same thing. The Dashboard just gives you a friendly way of setting folder permissions. Though, if you are uncomfortable with setting folder permissions, this advice is spot-on.

Quote:
If you're not going to use the Launchpad application on your xbmc client (and I can't blame you - Launchpad is bloatware, imo), then you need to create a Windows Credential on the client for access to the WHS Shared Folders.

On the client, go to the Control Panel/User Accounts and Family Safety/Manage Windows Credentials, and create a credential for a user that you have defined in your WHS 2011 Dashboard that has access to the folders used by XMBC.

Or just enable the guest account and allow it permissions to the folders you want to share through the dashboard.