Hello everyone,
I need help with a very peculiar problem that has popped up recently. Before, I was able to stream video files on my external hard drive connected to my Windows 7 PC, both through CIFS and SMB through ES File Explorer. Yesterday, I found that I can do neither! It is frustrating because all my shows are on the external hard drive. Here are the error messages I get through SMB and CIFS:
SMB: I generally like SMB better because it is less buggy and doesn’t require kernel support. Before, I could access the external HDD through my PC’s IP but now I cannot seem to connect to the external HDD or any folders I’ve shared that is on the external HDD. It is weird because I can connect to shared folders that are on the local HDD via SMB, just not the external HDD. When I try to connect to the external HDD an error message pops up saying “cannot connect” along with a list of possible reasons:
1. Wifi is off (it's not)
2. SMB server is out of network scope (??)
3. The IP is invalid (uhhh I can browse the IP)
4. Blocked by the firewall (maybe... how do I fix?)
5. SMB service is off (why would it be off for only external HDD?)
CIFS: This one is even weirder. When I try to mount it I get a “out of memory” error. WTF??? Again this error only occurs on external HDDs.
Let me know if you have any suggestions for fixing the android phone or maybe fixing something in Windows 7?
What kernel are you running? I can use ES File Explorer without an issue however I believe CIFS has to be in the kernel and I think most kernels do not include it. I don't know why since it would be handy. Certainly would for me. I've never found a definite answer to why CIFS is not cooked in with kernels.
If I recall correctly, CIFS support is implemented in the very latest Trinity kernel, Alpha56. You can check the Der Kernel thread in the Dev section for more info.
hey, i have an unrooted firetv and im trying to play some roms through xbmc (using rom collection browser). the roms are located on a NAS drive which all my devices have access to. I was able to get the plugin to import the roms and scrape the data but when i try to play any rom using an emulator i installed i get a message saying "unable to locate path sda1/blahblahblah/roms, path does not exist". I figure that this is because the device wont allow me to play the roms from the network shared
but if i were to root my drive - would it be possible to play the games i have from the shared drive or would i have to try something else like Samba or mounting a USB stick and porting the games to it?
even though XBMC can see the network drive.. im not sure if the fire TV itself does, so how would i let my firetv have access to the shared drive so i wont see this message anymore?
anyone able to help? im wondering if side-loading this SMB app on the fire tv will allow the device itself to see the shared folder and play games from it
has anyone tried this as yet?
Anyone got it working or is there any kernel that makes it work with stock ROM?, dont wanna go through all the hassel off reinstalling everything, :/
I wanna mount a network share in the file system so apps think that its part of the unit for apps without network browsing features.
Got root and twrp.
Hi all, if your goal is simply to play music and video from your NAS to your android device, you can use Kodi (xbmc) that can access cifs path directly!
I hacked up a script to mount a single Samba/CIFS share using adb shell directly on the firetv. This can be executed using any script manager (I use Rom Toolbox Pro's scripter) and if configured by your script manager it will in fact execute and mount the share on boot. If you have more than one share just use more than one copy of this script or feel free to hack it up yourself to extend it I am pretty much done with it at the moment but wanted to share.
Requires root and a script manager that can run scripts as root - also I have busybox installed on my firetv so that may be helpful as well.
https://github.com/mattgyver83/pyro
mattgyver83 said:
I hacked up a script to mount a single Samba/CIFS share using adb shell directly on the firetv. This can be executed using any script manager (I use Rom Toolbox Pro's scripter) and if configured by your script manager it will in fact execute and mount the share on boot.
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Click to collapse
Awesome! Any chance that games/apps could be run off of the mounted SMB share?
What is the purpose of this? Can you not just use an app like ES File Explorer or another SMB app to browse to a shared LAN folder?
Thanks.
tdfsu said:
What is the purpose of this? Can you not just use an app like ES File Explorer or another SMB app to browse to a shared LAN folder?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately no. ES File Explorer lets you browse network shares but it does not let you mount them and this means that only ES File Explorer can see the contents no other application can see those files and that problem is two fold, not only is that because its not a feature of ES File Explorer but its because of the security implementation of Android even if they tryed to implement it. The purpose of this script is to mount the network share to a local folder on the filesystem so that within any application you can browse to that directory and see those network files so they can be used, this is GREAT if you have a device that has a small storage footprint like the FireTV and you are already sharing out files on your network.
onlinespending said:
Awesome! Any chance that games/apps could be run off of the mounted SMB share?
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Click to collapse
Sorry I thought I had already replied to this a few days ago but apparently I didnt hit submit or something. Yes, that is exactly what this script is for and for that use case it works very well.
Edit: Sorry, I incorrectly answered your question. You can't run or install android applications over the network with this but you can perhaps store data on your network and load it within the application. An example would be like installing an emulator on your firetv and browsing to a ROM share on your network and loading the rom over the LAN. It would be pretty complicated to execute games or applications and likely troublesome.
I think I get the basic idea but I have questions...
1. Will this make it possible for aftv to be seen in workgroup by my other devices or at least show up if added as a network share?(remembered I don't think android can be in workgroup)
2. If your aftv's external drive is already mounted with adbFire mount samba drives script, are there any potential conflicts? Busybox is installed through adbFire.
This is the last piece for me. Every xbmc device can connect to the others, all connect to server, but my 2 aftvs can't share local files over smb with any other devices or each other.
KLit75 said:
I think I get the basic idea but I have questions...
1. Will this make it possible for aftv to be seen in workgroup by my other devices or at least show up if added as a network share?(remembered I don't think android can be in workgroup).
2. If your aftv's external drive is already mounted with adbFire mount samba drives script, are there any potential conflicts? Busybox is installed through adbFire.
This is the last piece for me. Every xbmc device can connect to the others, all connect to server, but my 2 aftvs can't share local files over smb with any other devices or each other.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To answer your questions;
1. No, this doesn't implement samba which is what would make it seen on your network. The way that I personally achieve this on my firetv is by sideloading and running "Samba FileSharing", that will do exactly what your trying todo there.
2. Until you said that I had no idea that adbFire even offered this kind of feature and have never used it. I would have to play with it but assuming its doing things the same way then unless your using the same mountpoint then no there should be no issues.
edit: The adbFire thing intrigued me so I took another look at it - please correct me if I am wrong though. From what I gather it does not actually mount a network share, what it does is start a samba server to share out your attached USB drive as a network share. This is very different than what my script does as it just connects network shares to your fireTV locally. My answers remain the same then, it shouldn't hurt anything. What I think you are looking for is probably more along the lines of a Samba Server running on the FireTV and you would only require my script if you need the other fireTVs to be able to see the shared out files as if they resided locally on it for apps to use.
Hope that helps
mattgyver83 said:
To answer your questions;
1. No, this doesn't implement samba which is what would make it seen on your network. The way that I personally achieve this on my firetv is by sideloading and running "Samba FileSharing", that will do exactly what your trying todo there.
2. Until you said that I had no idea that adbFire even offered this kind of feature and have never used it. I would have to play with it but assuming its doing things the same way then unless your using the same mountpoint then no there should be no issues.
edit: The adbFire thing intrigued me so I took another look at it - please correct me if I am wrong though. From what I gather it does not actually mount a network share, what it does is start a samba server to share out your attached USB drive as a network share. This is very different than what my script does as it just connects network shares to your fireTV locally. My answers remain the same then, it shouldn't hurt anything. What I think you are looking for is probably more along the lines of a Samba Server running on the FireTV and you would only require my script if you need the other fireTVs to be able to see the shared out files as if they resided locally on it for apps to use.
Hope that helps
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Click to collapse
Thanks. I wish I could speak a little more confidently about it it but at this time I've got more to learn.
Yes. That's exactly what I want--aftv to act as a server just like my computers do. I didn't fully understand that function on adbfire so I did install 3rd party smb software on aftv. There was a conflict. I needed to uninstall the software. Now I can transfer files over sftp, I can ssh to aftv but my Mac won't connect to the smb://adbfire/USB/ I tried cifs as well. Adbfire's script DOES support this but I can't get it working with Mac. Normally I'd say user error but I'm not the only one who can't do it. And it doesn't work on the new aftv I just bought so definetly not something I messed up.
I hesitate just because adbfire uses the same binaries as one of the popular smb softwares on play store. So I don't want to potentially break things trying to make it better. But this would be a great feature to get working. I know, as you said, your script doesn't do that. But if I get samba working as it should your script might be useful.
Sorry. I'm probably just filling this with words that don't all apply. Apparently I could benefit from what your offering but not until I get samba working correctly. And I'd be appreciative for any info to get that going but it MIGHT be a little off topic here. Thanks a lot for the quick detailed response!
Hey no problems glad I could help get you sorted out, I'll PM you with some more specific information that I think you are after that should get you where you want to be.
mattgyver83 said:
Sorry I thought I had already replied to this a few days ago but apparently I didnt hit submit or something. Yes, that is exactly what this script is for and for that use case it works very well.
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Click to collapse
Perfect. Any chance you can share how you actually install Fire TV apps to the SMB share? This would be great given the limited internal storage
Any chance you can share how you actually install Fire TV apps to the SMB share?
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Click to collapse
I don't use it in that way I just use it for accessing my current network shares from within applications on the fireTV, that is about all this script is intended for. To be honest I don't even think the way that the script is mounting the shares and in order for it to work would have to be implemented at the lower android levels so it could even properly boot that way. Its for the best though, networks generally are not as reliable as direct disk IO so I would suggest sticking to using internal storage, possibly checking out one of the external USB methods, and then just using your shares to house large data so you can basically make the most of all of your storage along the way. Hope this helps.
Edit: I just wanted to add that I looked back at our conversation and I see how I made it seem that might be possible. Sorry I clearly did not answer your question correctly for some reason what I read and what you said were two very different things, I was of the mindset that you were asking about loading ROMs persay over the network from within an emulation app and I have no idea why I thought thats what you were asking. That is not what your asking, no this wont load android applications over the network - Ill edit that post to make that distinction clearer.
mattgyver83 said:
I hacked up a script to mount a single Samba/CIFS share using adb shell directly on the firetv. This can be executed using any script manager (I use Rom Toolbox Pro's scripter) and if configured by your script manager it will in fact execute and mount the share on boot. If you have more than one share just use more than one copy of this script or feel free to hack it up yourself to extend it I am pretty much done with it at the moment but wanted to share.
Requires root and a script manager that can run scripts as root - also I have busybox installed on my firetv so that may be helpful as well.
https://github.com/mattgyver83/pyro
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Click to collapse
Works for me, thanks
Hi Mr Richard Dean Anderson
Magyver or O'neil?
..does this ciffs method depend on having fire tv i.e. a fire tv OS/kernel
What i mean is, can this script, potentially, be used, to work on "any" android, or does this only work for fire tv specifically?
banderos101 said:
Hi Mr Richard Dean Anderson
Magyver or O'neil?
..does this ciffs method depend on having fire tv i.e. a fire tv OS/kernel
What i mean is, can this script, potentially, be used, to work on "any" android, or does this only work for fire tv specifically?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Looks like it should work for android where you can enable adb, must have root and busybox.
Thank you for the script. Got it working using your example, but with one caveat I can't figure out.
So here's what I was trying to accomplish using this. I have a large library in Kodi so I was going to move all the data to my NAS and point Kodi to it. I had originally moved everything to a usb disk but just preferred the NAS route. The share mounts to /mnt/obb/myfiles and if I'm logged in as 'su' I can see the directory inside myfiles. Problem is anything stored inside myfiles isn't viewable outside of 'su'. How do I setup the share to be viewable by the shell acct?
My current Nexus 10 is on it last legs and I decided to pick up a Galaxy Tab T800 10.5 inch wifi only in good/Used condition on ebay and should receive it next week.
While I await it, I'm starting to look at its rooting process and if I should root it not. I assume it is coming unrooted, but won't know for sure till I get it and what version of Android it currently has. I'm not completely new to rooting as I have done it before on my Nexus 10 and Note 2 phone (yeah, time to upgrade). Its just been a while since I need to root something.
But do you think rooting it and going with a custom Rom is that much better than the Stock Rom?
Also, I did only buy a 16GB version, as the majority of all of my video's are on a home server and I use either XBMC/Kodi and BSPlayer to connect and watch things. But I remember with my Nexus 10 it was also possible to Map a Folder to a local server. Does anyone know if that is possible with Galaxy Tab? The ability to map a folder/drive is great to navigate and view pdf's, pictures etc.
Thanks
PT
ptmuldoon said:
My current Nexus 10 is on it last legs and I decided to pick up a Galaxy Tab T800 10.5 inch wifi only in good/Used condition on ebay and should receive it next week.
While I await it, I'm starting to look at its rooting process and if I should root it not. I assume it is coming unrooted, but won't know for sure till I get it and what version of Android it currently has. I'm not completely new to rooting as I have done it before on my Nexus 10 and Note 2 phone (yeah, time to upgrade). Its just been a while since I need to root something.
But do you think rooting it and going with a custom Rom is that much better than the Stock Rom?
Also, I did only buy a 16GB version, as the majority of all of my video's are on a home server and I use either XBMC/Kodi and BSPlayer to connect and watch things. But I remember with my Nexus 10 it was also possible to Map a Folder to a local server. Does anyone know if that is possible with Galaxy Tab? The ability to map a folder/drive is great to navigate and view pdf's, pictures etc.
Thanks
PT
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Previous to my S1 10.5" I had a rooted Nexus 10. I rooted without tripping Knox to retain my warranty. Although I had my S1 for several months without rooting (5.0.2) there will a few things I missed:
- Viper4Android (superior audio replacement)
- GMD Gesture Control (including immersion mode)
- Enhanced Power menu
- Titanium backups
- Full RW access to the internal microSD card
- The ability to theme the TouchWiz UI
There are more reasons to root but those are the first few that I desperately missed from the N10.
The free ES File Explorer can map CIFS/SAMBA network drives and with root can access the entire internal storage with RW permissions. I use Plex/MXPlayer to access my NAS video collection without transcoding but the setup you mentioned would also work well even if you didn't root.
I found that after having full RW access to my MicroSD card (64GB) that you could do what ever you wanted as far as mapping is concerned. I get Titanium Backup to write straight to the mSD card and have never seen my 16GB device as too small, it just does not happen. With that said I am not a gamer so take the comment with a grain of salt. My mSD card is mainly filled with backups and music files.
As you are likely to no longer be under warranty I would advise rooting using the CF method which includes TWRP then you can try which ever custom ROM catches your fancy and switch safely as long as to take nandroid backups with the enhanced recovery.
Sent from my SM-T800 using XDA Premium HD app
3DSammy said:
Previous to my S1 10.5" I had a rooted Nexus 10. I rooted without tripping Knox to retain my warranty. Although I had my S1 for several months without rooting (5.0.2) there will a few things I missed:
- Viper4Android (superior audio replacement)
- GMD Gesture Control (including immersion mode)
- Enhanced Power menu
- Titanium backups
- Full RW access to the internal microSD card
- The ability to theme the TouchWiz UI
There are more reasons to root but those are the first few that I desperately missed from the N10.
The free ES File Explorer can map CIFS/SAMBA network drives and with root can access the entire internal storage with RW permissions. I use Plex/MXPlayer to access my NAS video collection without transcoding but the setup you mentioned would also work well even if you didn't root.
I found that after having full RW access to my MicroSD card (64GB) that you could do what ever you wanted as far as mapping is concerned. I get Titanium Backup to write straight to the mSD card and have never seen my 16GB device as too small, it just does not happen. With that said I am not a gamer so take the comment with a grain of salt. My mSD card is mainly filled with backups and music files.
As you are likely to no longer be under warranty I would advise rooting using the CF method which includes TWRP then you can try which ever custom ROM catches your fancy and switch safely as long as to take nandroid backups with the enhanced recovery.
Sent from my SM-T800 using XDA Premium HD app
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Click to collapse
Thank's for the great info and feedback. I'll plan to root it when it arrives (hopefully this weekend). But have 2 more general questions as you seem pretty familiar wit the tablet.
I know its personal preference. But have you found a preferred custom Rom you like? And are you sure you ESFile Explorer can actually Map a network CIFS/Samba share location? I can use ESFileExplorer to access my server and navigate the network shares. But I have not figured out how to actually map the shares to a local folder on the tablets. I'll have to revisit that ability separately though as its not big deal as XBMC/Kodi and others can still access the shares.
But when the shares are actually mapped to local folder, you can navigate them from pretty much any native app.
ptmuldoon said:
... But have you found a preferred custom Rom you like? And are you sure you ESFile Explorer can actually Map a network CIFS/Samba share location? I can use ESFileExplorer to access my server and navigate the network shares. But I have not figured out how to actually map the shares to a local folder on the tablets. I'll have to revisit that ability separately though as its not big deal as XBMC/Kodi and others can still access the shares.
But when the shares are actually mapped to local folder, you can navigate them from pretty much any native app.
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Click to collapse
As I rooted but preserved my warranty by not tripping the Knox counter (I can return to pure uprooted stock), I must keep the Samsung locked bootloader. The means I have limited choices in custom ROMs and no choice in custom kernels. The only ROM I could flash is Ironman. With all that said I decided to stay with stock 5.0.2 and just augment it with root apps that I listed in my previous post. That gave me all the custom ROM features I regularly use.
I think now I understand better what you wanted from mapping. So ES File Manager would not give you what you wanted as its cifs/samba maps are usable by other apps only when you use the ES file manager UI. For example click on a CIFS mapped video file in the ES file Manager UI and an associated video player plays the video. In the past I used XBMC on Android and that version included CIFS/Samba drivers that allowed me to access my network attached video collection. I suspect that feature still exists.
Now if you had video files on either the internal storage or external microSD card and wanted those directories available to XBMC the internal storage would be no issue but I think you need to use an app like Stick mount for the microSD. Stick mount creates a symbolic link on the internal storage (\sdcard) to directories on the microSD card allowing any app to access those files as if they were located on internal storage. That may accomplish what you want.
I still maybe misinterpreting what your trying to accomplish with mapping but I'm fairly sure one way or another you can get what your looking for especially as you'll be rooted.
Sent from my SM-T800 using XDA Premium HD app
3DSammy said:
I think now I understand better what you wanted from mapping. So ES File Manager would not give you what you wanted as its cifs/samba maps are usable by other apps only when you use the ES file manager UI. For example click on a CIFS mapped video file in the ES file Manager UI and an associated video player plays the video. In the past I used XBMC on Android and that version included CIFS/Samba drivers that allowed me to access my network attached video collection. I suspect that feature still exists.
I still maybe misinterpreting what your trying to accomplish with mapping but I'm fairly sure one way or another you can get what your looking for especially as you'll be rooted.
Sent from my SM-T800 using XDA Premium HD app
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Click to collapse
Yeah. It was tricky on the Nexus 10 to mount a CIFS/Samba share and needed specific cifs.ko and other modules. It was sorta of hit and miss and I remember most said it worked best when you mounted them to the /mnt/obb system file folder location. If you google it, you'll find bunch of topics leading back to posts on xda about it.
Its the same concept of mapping a share with a PC, etc. Once done, any program/app should see that information as a local system folder. So you could launch any app and if needed, navigate to your network share files to open a document., text file, pdf viewer, and so depending on what the app was looking for. Even ESFile Explorer would then see your network shares as a local system directory. And you could actually save your titanium backups directly to your NAS or network server, if you wanted to.