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Sharing drives on Linux
greggors84 - 21/3/10 at 03:41 PM

Im looking at getting an Acer Revo mini pc to use as a media centre in my living room.

On ebuyer they are £45 cheaper with Linpus Linux instead of windows 7.

As its only for running a media centre and I know that XBMC (the software I was planning on using) runs on linux I thought it would save resources and run quicker without windows.

The only question I have is can I share the hard drive on the pc running Linux over my network? This would mean I could easily send all my videos straight from my main pc to the media centre one.

I have had a little play with the trial version and searched on google but have no experience of linux so im not really sure what im doing!

locogeoff - 21/3/10 at 03:52 PM

It's been a while since I mucked about with Linux but IIRC it's a Samba server you want to run on the Linux box to allow Windows access to your Linux file system.

tegwin - 21/3/10 at 03:57 PM

Yes... if you want to be able to access the linux disk from a windows machine... you need to setup samba on the linux mchine.... its fairly easy..


if you want to access windows disks from the linux machine.... no setting up needed!

stevebubs - 21/3/10 at 04:07 PM

Yes - just install XBMC live onto the box and off you go....

stevebubs - 21/3/10 at 04:08 PM

PS If you run XBMC under windows, it doesn't use the Revo's GPU acceleration so will run like a dog anyway. Ubuntu Linux / XBMC Live is the way to go

[Edited on 21/3/10 by stevebubs]

stevebubs - 21/3/10 at 04:09 PM

quote:
Originally posted by tegwin
Yes... if you want to be able to access the linux disk from a windows machine... you need to setup samba on the linux mchine.... its fairly easy..


if you want to access windows disks from the linux machine.... no setting up needed!


Acutally if you run XBMC, it runs an UPNP server so you can share the files out to a UPNP client on your main PC, and also to any other UPNP device on your network - I've successfully streamed from XBMC live to my XBOX360, for example.

[Edited on 21/3/10 by stevebubs]

mad4x4 - 21/3/10 at 05:18 PM

file sharing on UBUNTU is down with samba intergrated into the OS

britishtrident - 21/3/10 at 05:23 PM

Depends a lot on the version of linux most modern desktop distros come with samba for sharing with windows hosts
and clients already set up.

greggors84 - 24/3/10 at 07:38 PM

Thanks for the advice. Think I will go for the linux version then. If I decide I have to go windows I should be able to pick up a copy of XP for less than the £45 difference anyway.