Beginner's help with sharing from NFS?

1st Official Post

    I'm running LibreELEC 8.2.5 on a RPi 3B+

    I have a usb hdd containing all my movies connected to it.

    My aim is to use Kodi on my Android devices on same network, and add that hdd as a source.

    (I've tried and successfully streamed from the Pi with DLNA/uPNP, but I don't want to navigate through metadata provided by that server - I want the external movies actually catalogued in a local library.)

    I previously had some success with SMB before I upgraded LibreELEC to the current version, after which it stopped working and I learnt about SMB1 now being unavailable by default, and Kodi for Android not yet supporting SMB2+.

    Correct me if I'm wrong - these are just my understanding from reading.

    It seemed to me the internet was suggesting to use NFS, for speed and avoiding security issues of SMB1 (and as SMB2/3 is out).

    Now, I'm basically a beginner with Linux and obviously only just learnt what NFS is, but I'm quite capable of following instructions.

    The reason I post this is because every article I find about NFS is either written for more advanced Linux users, and/or comes with a warning that you should know a bit about Linux before messing with this.

    I'd be surprised if I was the only novice who wanted this, so I'm surprised I can't find some instructions for beginners that just says line-by-line what to put into an SSH window that would make this work? I mean, since my setup is pretty much stock standard, it couldn't be the case that these instructions would need to be too specific to my situation.

    Am I right, that NFS what I want?

    If there is already an article I'd greatly appreciate someone pointing me to it, or otherwise it seems this might be a handy thing to provide. I know how to SSH with root so can skip that part, but what to do next written in laymans terms would be great to read!

    TIA :)

    • Official Post

    I've been using NFS as my default on my NAS and it's fairly easy to setup, but as with anything Linux it needs some understanding of all the options.

    However in your case it will not work as LE does not operate a NFS server, only a client, so that discounts your idea.

    So - in my opinion - I think you'd be better off installing "emby server" on LE Here and use the emby app Here on your Android device to play your media. For more information about Emby see Emby.

    Okay now this is useful information. I guess when I was reading about NFS in LE I didn't realise this was referring to LE acting as a client, not a server. I'm surprised though to find the suggestion is to use a client that is not related to Kodi!

    I got Emby working. Although it was a little clumsy trying to find where to set up the library from within the client app -- sort of like an app within an app -- but I got the idea in the end. Thanks for the suggestion and I'll press on seeing if this meets my needs.

    • Official Post

    For what it's worth... I've used NFS server on various Ubuntu desktop/server machines over the years, and 99.99% without a glitch. As always, it's pretty easy to set things up once you know how. Installing an Ubuntu file server with NFS + its settings (disk mounts and /etc/exports) can be done in 15 minutes. Browse for the NFS shares in the Kodi GUI, and it all works. :)