Share a folder from your Vortexbox

If you need some additional shares except the default ones (music, movies, pictures, files) just create them. Only a few steps need to be done, and it only takes a few minutes. Before making any changes to smb.conf backup the original one.

1. Add a new section to the smb.conf
   Connect to the vortexbox with SSH and open smb.conf with an editor.
   
   e.g:

   nano file /etc/samba/smb.conf

   
   
   add following section:

 ###### Share for temporary data sharing #########
[Sharename]
path = /home/trash
guest ok = yes
writeable = yes
# create mask = 0777


explaination:

[Sharename] - the name of the share, it can be different from the diretory name
path - path to the directory on OS layer
guest ok - everyone in the network can access the folder
writable - it's writable for everyone in the network
create mask - permissions for "owner", "group", "other" as typically on Linux OS. 777 means that all 3 groups have "read", "write", "execute" permissions. default value is 744. Note: in my example it is uncommented



2. Reload smb.conf and restart smb daemon



service smb reload
service smb restart

Youtube Plugin - Bad Youtube URL

Today I also recognized a problem with the youtube plugin. When you paste a URL to a youtube video it displays "Bad YouTube URL". It neither works when entering the original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zovedef1oIU nor when you try to add it like this youtube://zovedef1oIU

In the slimdevices forum other users allready posted the problem. I hope it will get fixed soon.

Thread can be found here: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=87731&page=11

Upgrade to Vortexbox 2.0

Last week I updated my Vortexbox to the new Version (2.0). But I had some troubles.

At first I tried the direct update from fedora 14 to fedora 16 according to the tutorial. I updated to Logitech Media Server (LMS) 7.7.0, cleaned up the /boot directory, but after downloading the preupgrade file for fedora 16 there was still
not enough space on /boot although the partition size was 485 MB.

As I allready made a backup of my music library I decided to install VB 2.0 completely new from CD. This worked fine and only took 15-20 minutes. But after the first time booting the LMS 7.7.0 wasn't installed. So I had to install it manually.

 
yum clean
yum update
yum reinstall logitechmediaserver

Now everything seemed to work fine until I imported my music collection. LMS 7.7.0 has a problem with pictures stored in some mp3 tags. After some research in the VB forum I found a solution that seems to work up to now. It's the update to LMS 7.7.1 rc1. The official update to 7.1.1 should be available next week when I remember correctly.

Update (11. december 2011): After a restart of the VB I have the same problem as before upgrading to RC1.

I've found a solution now that works for me. After the VB booted, I have to stop vortexbox-player and Logitech media server (service still called squeezeboxserver). After that, start LMS again and vortexbox-player.

 
service vortexbox-player stop
service squeezeboxserver stop


service squeezeboxserver start 
service vortexbox-player start