[mythtv-users] backend power

Rod Smith mythtv at rodsbooks.com
Mon Feb 19 22:26:36 UTC 2007


On Monday 19 February 2007 16:58, Jared Greenwald wrote:
> I seem to be a little confused about how this whole backend/frontend thing
> works.
>
> I'd like to be able to keep all of my media up on the backend.  This
> includes transcoded DVD movies, music, and tv shows.  It doesn't seem to be
> setup this way.  Ultimately, I'd like to setup a single backend machine
> with multiple frontend machines.  I'd like all of the media files to reside
> on the backend so that they can be played on any of the frontend machines.
>
> I'm playing with a test setup at the moment with a backend and separate
> frontend machine and when I attempt to rip a DVD, it seems to just plop the
> resulting files on the local frontend's disk.
>
> Also, same with mp3s/music files.
>
> Has anyone tried this?  How would I be able to set this up such that
> everything is shared.

If there's a within-MythTV way of doing this, I don't know what it is; 
however, doing it with the help of conventional Linux file-sharing tools 
shouldn't be too hard. You need to do two things:

1) Configure the backend system to share the directories in which you
   want to store video files, music files, and whatever else.

2) Create /etc/fstab entries on the frontend system to automatically
   mount the directories you've shared via step #1 in the locations
   where you tell the frontend to place ripped DVD files, to look for
   video files, etc.

NFS is the Linux-native way to do this, and NFS *SHOULD* work adequately, but 
I've only done a few short tests with it so my practical experience is 
limited. Alternatively, you could try Samba on the backend and Linux's SMBFS 
or CIFS driver on the frontend. This *SHOULD* also work adequately, but I've 
not tried it at all with MythTV. For Myth/Linux-only networks, I'd try NFS; 
but Samba/SMBFS/CIFS would be easier if you want Windows boxes to have access 
to your MythTV files. (You can run both NFS and Samba on the backend, if you 
like.) In any event, you'll have to pay attention to ownership, permissions, 
and read/write vs. read-only issues, but the details of how to do this are 
different for the two protocols.

-- 
Rod Smith
http://www.rodsbooks.com


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