Alx9r's Network Attached Storage Setup

Alx9r's Sample Setup

System Diagram

I opted to use a built-in (sata connected) secondary media storage drive for my hybrid core. This scheme has two qualities:

• The media drive can be formatted XFS so that LinuxMCE can "listen" for new media files that are copied to the drive. Other filesystems don't allow for this.
• Fresh installations of LinuxMCE can be put on the primary drive without losing media. If you have only a single drive, this is not possible without going through a less-supported multi-partition installation.

Folder Structure and Media (Pre-Installation)

Before installing LinuxMCE, I formatted my secondary media drive to the XFS filesystem using the gparted LiveCD. Then I created the standard LinuxMCE media drive folder structure on that drive. The structure looks like this:

public

|-data
   |-videos
   |-music
   |-pictures

Also before installation, I moved all of my media to the appropriate folder on the media drive.

Symlink and Permissions

Once LinuxMCE is installed, there are some steps that I performed to prepare the media drive: I created a symlink to the drive and set appropriate permissions to it.

I wanted the drive to be accessible as /media/bi (bi short for built-in). I created a symlink accordingly using this command:

ln -s /mnt/device/XX /media/bi

Where XX is some sort of ID number for the media drive that seems to change each time I install LinuxMCE.

I wanted the default user, linuxmce to be able to do things at will on that drive, so I made that user the owner:

sudo chown -R linuxmce /media/bi

Everyone should be able to delete, rename, and copy stuff to the public folder, so I changed the permissions accordingly:

chmod a+w -R /media/bi/public

These permissions pass through on the samba shares, which means that I can put stuff on the media drive folders from a Windows computer by browsing to \\mce\public^1. and logging in as a LinuxMCE user.

Footnotes

1. The string mce in the path \\mce\public is mapped in my router's hosts file. See my router setup for details.