Adding network paths

[nuentes 41]

I'm a bit confused about adding a network path. I have set up a VM of OMV, and I'm offloading all NAS responsibilities from my Ubuntu Mate VM (that hosts emby) to that. I've configured both NFS and SMB in OMV, and the shares are working. It appears NFS isn't supported by Emby, and that's fine. However, I'm having trouble adding network shares into Emby. When I try to navigate to \\omv.local\ShareName, I get an error saying "The path could not be found. Please ensure the path is valid and try again.". This is a valid path, however, so this must be a permission issue. I have accessed the share locally in the Ubuntu Mate VM and asked caja to remember the password forever (under the same user that emby is running in). This apparently is not enough, as I still cannot access the shares from Emby. For the time being, I have mounted the NFS network paths and am using those paths to add files to emby, and also making use of the Network Shared Folder option. However, I don't think this is a good plan long-term. Also, I currently have no reason to believe my Network Shared Folder option will work successfully based on my current rate of success.

I tracked down this guide which says at the end:

Quote

If you choose to use network paths instead of local drive letters you will likely have to setup network credentials for the username running the Emby Server application.  You will need to grant this user proper access to folders and files as well.

I guess my question is - am I going about this all wrong? And if what I'm doing does make sense, then what do I need to do to set up network credentials for the username running Emby server?

And yes, I'm aware that I could install Emby on OMV. I don't want to. I only want it to operate as a NAS.

[mastrmind11 722]

17 hours ago, nuentes said:

I'm a bit confused about adding a network path. I have set up a VM of OMV, and I'm offloading all NAS responsibilities from my Ubuntu Mate VM (that hosts emby) to that. I've configured both NFS and SMB in OMV, and the shares are working. It appears NFS isn't supported by Emby, and that's fine. However, I'm having trouble adding network shares into Emby. When I try to navigate to \\omv.local\ShareName, I get an error saying "The path could not be found. Please ensure the path is valid and try again.". This is a valid path, however, so this must be a permission issue. I have accessed the share locally in the Ubuntu Mate VM and asked caja to remember the password forever (under the same user that emby is running in). This apparently is not enough, as I still cannot access the shares from Emby. For the time being, I have mounted the NFS network paths and am using those paths to add files to emby, and also making use of the Network Shared Folder option. However, I don't think this is a good plan long-term. Also, I currently have no reason to believe my Network Shared Folder option will work successfully based on my current rate of success.

I tracked down this guide which says at the end:

I guess my question is - am I going about this all wrong? And if what I'm doing does make sense, then what do I need to do to set up network credentials for the username running Emby server?

And yes, I'm aware that I could install Emby on OMV. I don't want to. I only want it to operate as a NAS.

The correct (and preferred) way is to mount your shares on the emby server and point emby to the mounts.  Done.  Update your fstab file so the mounts are persistent after reboot. 

[KMBanana 116]

Rather than editing fstab I would recommend to setup autofs so it will remount if ubuntu boots up before OMV, there are network issues, OMV reboots, etc. 

Here's a guide for setting it up on ubuntu.  https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/guide-auto-mounting-filesystems-in-linux/1761

[nuentes 41]

54 minutes ago, mastrmind11 said:

The correct (and preferred) way is to mount your shares on the emby server and point emby to the mounts.

Great, so I did it right. I guess I came across a lot of forum posts that said to never use mapped drives, however that is likely a Windows-specific response.

42 minutes ago, KMBanana said:

Rather than editing fstab I would recommend to setup autofs so it will remount if ubuntu boots up before OMV, there are network issues, OMV reboots, etc. 

This sounds great. I'll look into this. I had fstab on my list of things to do, but I've had bad experiences with it in the past and was really hoping to stay away from it. Ever have your server not boot because a USB HDD died? I sure have.

[mastrmind11 722]

21 hours ago, nuentes said:

Great, so I did it right. I guess I came across a lot of forum posts that said to never use mapped drives, however that is likely a Windows-specific response.

This sounds great. I'll look into this. I had fstab on my list of things to do, but I've had bad experiences with it in the past and was really hoping to stay away from it. Ever have your server not boot because a USB HDD died? I sure have.

fstab is universally accepted as the way to mount drives on startup.  if you are adding usb drives to your fstab, you need to include the nofail directive on the usb mount line or linux won't boot due to the missing drive.