[mythtv-users] frontend setup (NFS ?) need clarification

[chris at cpr.homelinux.net]

On Fri, Dec 30, 2005 at 08:01:43PM +0100, Franco wrote:
> How should I set up things so that I can play all my video, music, etc.
> from all the frontends?  I believe the answer is "NFS", but should I setup
> things so that the paths look the same from every machine?

> I see that if I try to browse the videos from a frontend, I can see all
> the video "covers" I had setup in the backend database, but when I try
> to play them, I get a "file not found" (or similar) error.

The thumbs and movies are in different directories.  Deleting a movie 
from the drive doesn't remove it from the database, so it will 
continue to appear (with image) until you re-scan your media 
directory from the setup page.  It will prompt for permission to 
remove the missing movie from the database.

In any case, I think your original speculation is correct and MythTV 
expects all front-ends to use the same directory paths for the media. 
That's easily accomplished, and probably a good idea anyway as 
having a common configuration makes maintaining (or adding) machines 
easier.

> And how do I should setup things, as I have my videos, music, etc., 
> split among the disks of the various machines?

The directory you specify is deep-scanned, so it's possible to use 
multiple nfs mounts to aggregate various machines under that 
directory.  For example, if box1 exports /home/franco/videos and box2 
exports /var/lib/movies, you could mount them as 
/multimedia/movies/box1 and /multimedia/movies/box2 and then tell 
Myth that the videos are in /multimedia/movies.  You could then 
aggregate your mp3s under /multimedia/music, thumbs under 
/multimedia/thumbs, etc.  I would suggest using the nfs auto-mounter 
with the "ghost" option so that the mountpoints will be visible.  
That way, when Myth isn't playing a movie the nfs share will be 
unmounted, but when Myth scans the video directory it will know to 
check both box1 and box2 (which will cause them to automatically 
mount).

> Last question: the only thing I found mentioned in the FAQ, was the
> "myth://" URL... do I need to use that and where do I put it?

You can probably ignore it.  That url is used in MythWeb so that 
certain clients (which may not even exist yet) can access recordings 
via the web browser.

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