Emby in Ubuntu 16.04, spaces in path names

[mlapoint 5]

I am new to Emby and somewhat new to Ubuntu (although I used to be a DB programmer running on Unix).  I installed Emby on Ubuntu 16.04 and it is working fine.  However I want to put my movies on a WD My Cloud 4 TB device.  I actually had one and it is in the process of being replaced by WD via RMA so I know the file structure.

 

In the mean time, I am using a USB device connected to Ubuntu to test out how it will connect on the My Cloud device.  I have the movies in the following folder that I want to set up as a Library in Emby.  The path is everything within the quotes not including the quotes:

 

"/media/mlapoint/USB 3.0 (1)/Public/Shared Videos/Movies"

 

I know Linux has issues with spaces in directory names.  I have tried several different ways to deal with the spaces and they do not work.  For example:

 

1)  The above quoted string.

2)  /media/mlapoint/USB\ 3.0\ \(1\)//Public/Shared\ Videos//Movies and several variations of it

 

#2 works if I go to the terminal and "cd /media/mlapoint/USB\ 3.0\ \(1\)//Public/Shared\ Videos//Movies".  Unfortunately it does not work in the Library settings after I hit "Add Media Library/Folders/ +Add".

 

If anyone can help me, that would be great!

 

Thank You,

 

Mike LaPointe

[thatoneguy99 33]

why don't you mount it to a different place without spaces in the file name? You can do this with the UUID of the drive and an fstab entry. Is the folder you typed in where it auto mounted to?

 

 

Sent from my phone!

Edited March 1, 2017 by thatoneguy99

[mlapoint 5]

Thank You thatoneguy99.  I was sort of thinking of doing something like that, but I don't know how to go about it.  I have dealt with fstab before when I mounted my WD My Cloud and yes, the USB drive was auto mounted to the name I gave.  The thing is, the spaces in the directories are what I know are in the My Cloud device and I do not want to change them.  But, mounting them with a different name on just the Linux box seems it would work.  Can you give me a clue what I should put in the /etc/fstab file?  I was thinking of just running the names together without the spaces...

 

Thank You,

 

Mike LaPointe

[mastrmind11 717]

Thank You thatoneguy99.  I was sort of thinking of doing something like that, but I don't know how to go about it.  I have dealt with fstab before when I mounted my WD My Cloud and yes, the USB drive was auto mounted to the name I gave.  The thing is, the spaces in the directories are what I know are in the My Cloud device and I do not want to change them.  But, mounting them with a different name on just the Linux box seems it would work.  Can you give me a clue what I should put in the /etc/fstab file?  I was thinking of just running the names together without the spaces...

 

Thank You,

 

Mike LaPointe

Find your device name by typing: sudo fdisk -l

Create a mount point: mkdir /media/movies (or whatever you want to call it)

Test your drive by manually mounting it, using the device name from the first step: sudo mount -t vfat YOUR_DEVICE_NAME_HERE /media/movies

cd to the new mount point and ls to make sure it mounted

Point Emby to /media/movies and make sure all is well

If ok, nano fstab and add YOUR_DEVICE_NAME_HERE /media/movies vfat defaults 0 2

 

If you plan to keep the USB drive mounted for a long time, it's best to use the UUID of the drive instead of the device name (which can change depending on whether you add more drives), but that's a different discussion.

Edited March 2, 2017 by mastrmind11

[Luke 37250]

hi @@mlapoint, has this helped? As far as Emby is concerned, spaces in paths are OK as long as natively allowed by the file system.

[mlapoint 5]

Luke,

 

That did help and I made a new share called "SharedVideos" instead of "Shared Videos".  It made it so much easier.  Although my WD My Cloud does understand spaces, it is too complicated and I just thought if I took out the space it would work just fine.

 

Mike