[PROBLEM] Samba setup.....Idiot guide required??

[Guido57]

I've been having trouble getting all my Pi's to access music on a hard drive on one of the Pi's.  The drive is NTSF3 according to the df -Th command.  Might copying the files to a FAT formatted drive ease the pain?

[Tim Curtis]

Are you getting any error messages in the WebUI?

[Guido57]

Would that include the messages I get in moOde when it fails to establish a connection when I'm trying to set up a NAS source?
FWIW I have one unit running the Pi OS that can access the drive remotely but it's a little funky with VLC media player, dead to Kodi. I mount the drive using the GUI on the OS. Nothing at all with the Pi running moOde.
I've gone through various tutorials on mounting the drive on the Pi running moOde, but no success.
This is the error I get:
Err (mount error(111): could not connect to 10.0.4.94Unable to find suitable address.
10.0.4.94 is the address of the Pi with the hard drive.

[Tim Curtis]

What does the Remote NAS Source screen look like?

Here's a screenshot of one of mine.

   

[Guido57]

screen shot attached.

[Tim Curtis]

In the Remote NAS Source screen does your pi with the hard drive show up in the SCAN?
On the pi with the hard drive is SMB (Samba) turned on in System Config, and is the same password set?

[TheOldPresbyope]

Would that include the messages I get in moOde when it fails to establish a connection when I'm trying to set up a NAS source?
FWIW I have one unit running the Pi OS that can access the drive remotely but it's a little funky with VLC media player, dead to Kodi. I mount the drive using the GUI on the OS. Nothing at all with the Pi running moOde.
I've gone through various tutorials on mounting the drive on the Pi running moOde, but no success.
This is the error I get:
Err (mount error(111): could not connect to 10.0.4.94Unable to find suitable address.
10.0.4.94 is the address of the Pi with the hard drive.

First things first. That error message usually means what it says: the moOde player (I'll call it the "local" player)  you're trying to connect to the remote SMB share can't find a host at the address you gave.

A test: From the command line of the local player, try to ping the host offering the SMB share. For example, on one of my players pinging a correct IP address

Code:

rho@m915blue:~ $ ping -c 1 10.0.0.215
PING 10.0.0.215 (10.0.0.215) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.0.0.215: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=98.2 ms

--- 10.0.0.215 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 98.183/98.183/98.183/0.000 ms

Whereas, if I mistype the IP address

Code:

rho@m915blue:~ $ ping -c 1 10.0.0.214
PING 10.0.0.214 (10.0.0.214) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 10.0.0.197 icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable

--- 10.0.0.214 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 0 received, +1 errors, 100% packet loss, time 0ms

In the moOde webUI, making this mistake in the Library conf will cause exactly

Code:

241205 102656 worker: Try (mount -t cifs "//10.0.0.214/SDCard" -o username="guest",password="",rsize=61440,wsize=65536,iocharset=utf8,ro,noserverino,cache=none,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0777 "/mnt/NAS/test")
20241205 102656 worker: Err (mount error(113): could not connect to 10.0.0.214Unable to find suitable address.)

Just my 2-cents worth.

Regards,
Kent

[Guido57]

Would this be simpler if all my Pi were running moOde?
Does moOde need to have the drive mounted before running, does moOde handle that or does it not make a difference. I've used online tutorials to guide me in mounting the drive.
FWIW after going to the command line on the hard drive Pi to (re)install Samba, I was kind of able to connect to the local player but at that point moOde just hung with the progress circle spinning. I left it overnight and it was still hung. I had to use PuTTY to turn the local player off.
Thanks for the suggestions. For right now I've got to play with this a bit more.

[Tim Curtis]

With fresh Moode all thats needed is to plug in a USB drive, turn on SMB (Samba) in System Config and then on a second Pi open Library Config and create a Remote NAS Source. Click SCAN to find the SMB share on the first Pi. Specify Guest as the userid and a blank password.

[TheOldPresbyope]

@Guido57 

You ask

Would this be simpler if all my Pi were running moOde?

At this point, I'm not sure what the "this" means. Any host running an smbclient should be able to mount any SMB share published by any smbserver on the same subnet (assuming either guest access to the share is allowed or a correct smb username/password pair is used). That's the whole point of the SMB protocol.

Here at home, I've published shares from Windows on PCs; from various Linux distros on PCs, Pis, and SBCs based on other ARM CPUs; and, of course, from moOde players. Similarly, I've run various smbclients (which includes moOde players) on the same devices and easily discovered and mounted the published shares.


Based on the error you reported, I believe you need to look at your network setup since no host was detected at the IP address you gave.


Without a clearer understanding of your environment, it's hard to make specific suggestions.

Regards,
Kent