XBMC media centre and shared files on Ubuntu

[Nihil]

Hello,

first I apologize if this is something "everyone should know", but I'm quite new to Linux distro and I got the "know about", just missing that useful "know how".

So my situation is following... I have set up a XBMC (openELEC) on my Rpi, on my PC I am using Ubuntu 12.04 LTE. I've got an external HDD(s) plugged to my PC, that contain movies, TV shows, music... and I want to keep the drives plugged in my computer, but access the files on them with my Rpi.

Every solution I have found by now, is meant for Windows. Probably because every Linux user can set up home network but me.

Long story short:
- what protocol should I use to share files from my PC to Rpi?
- how do I do it?

Thank you for your time and have a nice day.

[southpaw]

am pretty new to all this nix stuff myself but believe its a "Cifs" share you need to setup on the Ubuntu machine, I`m sure google will be much more helpful than me now you know what to search for , good luck

[Nihil]

Ok, to update this topic with my solution: I decided to scrap the idea of external HDDs plugged in my computer and accessed with my RPi, instead I plugged the HDDs in RPi and access them with my computer. I also started using Yatse app on my smartphone and it's great. I can set or change music with my phone, without ever turning on the TV. Perfect solution.

I have another problem now. When I was transfering files from my computer to my RPi via SFTP, I noticed the speed of transfer is quite slow - 300-500 kB/s, which means a 1 GB file will take about half an hour to get uploaded. Both devices are connected via WiFi, on a decent router, so I suspect the problem is the "secure" part of the protocol, where all the encoding/decoding happens.
So I thought to myself "I'll just use normal FTP then", but it gives error when I try to connect it. I use Ubuntu 12.04 Nautilus' "Connect to Server..." and then choose the option SFTP, which works, but FTP (with login) doesn't.

Does anyone have some advice what am I missing here?

[ghans]

OpenELEC doesn't have a FTP server on-board , and you cannot
add one because OpenELEC has no package managment onboard
and takes pride in being a minimal distro.

You might have to switch to RaspBMC.

Between Linux machines , NFS is the "best" protocol (faster
than SMB/CIFS for sure).

ghans

[DougieLawson]

Between Linux machines , NFS is the "best" protocol (faster
than SMB/CIFS for sure).

+1 for that.
My NAS box does NFS (shared with Ubuntu and my RPi). My Ubuntu box does cifs (of the NFS shares) so the windows machines can see those shared drives.

[Nihil]

OpenELEC doesn't have a FTP server on-board , and you cannot
add one because OpenELEC has no package managment onboard
and takes pride in being a minimal distro.

You might have to switch to RaspBMC.

Oh, I never thought there is that much differences between OpenELEC and RaspBMC. I had RaspBMC, but I switched to OpenELEC later as I had the feeling it was faster. I guess I'll have to reconsider switching back, because the file transfer is to slow for me and I don't wan't to move the HDDs from RPi to PC and back...

Thank you

[ghans]

Did you check if OpenELEC doesn't have a NFS or Samba server
on-board ?


ghans