I am wanting to store all my myth data on my windows 2003 server as it has a lot more disk space. I had this working fine just using a smbmount command, but I had to do it everytime the system rebooted and when recording for a while the backend seemed to quit and I believe this is because it could not write to the remote folder I then saw the wiki on autofs and figured this would be my solution. I went through the steps and my proper folders showing up when I boot, but the contents are missing. As a final result I would eentually like all the folders in /myth to simply be symbolic links to the actual folders in /remotemyth

here are my files:

/etc/auto.master I commented out the line it specified to in the wiki and added the below line

/remotemyth /etc/auto.samba.mnt --timeout=2 --ghost


in /etc/auto.samba.mnt I have placed

tv -fstype=smbfs.credentials=/home/mythtv/.smbpassword ://ctrlalt313373/tv

music -fstype=smbfs.credentials=/home/mythtv/.smbpassword ://ctrlalt313373/music


note that each of the above are on 1 line each


I also have the password file /home/mythtv/.smbpassword

I can browse to /remotemyth/music but when I do an ls I get "ls: .: No such file or directory"

also on the windows side I have two shared folders tv and music. The mythv user has full control rights on both.

You are using . <peroids> those should be , <commas> in the etc/auto.samba.mnt lines.

Also make sure that /remotemyth directory does NOT exist, autofs will create for you.

Here is a script I use to setup samba and autofs (replace %--% variables)

Ahhh I feel really dumb. That took care of it. Thanks for the help. Hopefully this works out as I would like to maintain most of my filestorage on my windows 2003 server since I am much more familiar will maintaining it. I am concerned, thought, that the computer and network speed won't be able to handle writting across the network.

Also, what is the last cache line for that you have in your file??

It seems I have spoken slightly too soon as I don't have write access as the mythtv user to the mounted folders. On the windows side the mythtv user has full control and on the myth side here is what I get if I do a ls -l of /myth

drwxr-xr-x 6 www-data www-data 4096 Oct 19 2004 avimanager
drwxrwxr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 4096 Apr 11 20:20 backup
drwxrwxr-x 3 mythtv mythtv 4096 Apr 14 22:20 gallery
drwxrwxr-x 6 mythtv mythtv 4096 Apr 11 20:20 games
drwxrwxrwx 2 mythtv mythtv 4096 Dec 10 02:05 image_cache
drwx------ 2 mythtv mythtv 16384 Apr 11 20:06 lost+found
lrwxrwxrwx 1 mythtv root 17 Apr 23 16:11 music -> /remotemyth/music
drwxr-xr-x 15 root root 4096 Apr 11 20:59 mythburn
drwxrwxr-x 8 mythtv mythtv 4096 Aug 31 2005 nuv2disc
drwxr-xr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 4096 Apr 23 13:17 pretty
drwxrwxrwx 2 mythtv mythtv 4096 Apr 22 21:19 stream
drwxrwxr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 4096 Apr 11 20:20 tmp
lrwxrwxrwx 1 mythtv root 14 Apr 23 16:12 tv -> /remotemyth/tv
drwxrwxr-x 4 mythtv mythtv 4096 Apr 11 20:24 video


and here is a ls -l of /remotemyth


drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 Apr 23 16:17 music
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4096 Apr 23 16:16 tv


I am assuming the issue is here because mythtv doesn't have write access, but I am unsure how to correct this. If I try to do a "chown mythtv music" I get an error because this is really the windows folder. (I assume this is why atleast)

That tells Mplayer (MythVideo player) to use a 2MB cache when playing files, without it sometimes the videos will skip and jump over the network.



Not exactly sure, I just store media on my Windows server Myth doesn't write anything to it. If I had to make an educated guess I would try playing with the lines in auto.samba.mnt and using uid= and gid= options. My MythTV uid and gid is 105.

Something like this ...



I would google autofs and uid/gid .

Not sure how well recording to over a network will work, guess depends too on if we are talking wireless, 100mbs, or 1000mbs. To me it makes sense to store music, pics, and videos on a server or NAS. Not sure if I see the need for TV recordings though, I transcode recordings to XviD if I want to keep long term. My PVR-150 avgerages 2gb per hr, and I can get XviD around 400mb per hr. If we are talking HD even more space.

Thanks for the help. That uid and gid seemed to work, but I'll need to do somemore testing tomorrow. The box that I have mythtv on right now has a very small harddrive so that is why I save it all on the network. It would be nice to figure out a way to store the current recording on the local hard drive, but as soon as it is complete move it over to the network storage. I'll probably eventually have to move it to a bigger & faster box, but right now I am testing the waters with what hardware I currently have laying around to see if I want to make more of an investment.