Easy question… What is the difference between adding a new source (http://kodi.wiki/view/Adding_video_sources) and mounting a network share (noeit.com) except for the first being a GUI approach instead of the terminal?
Mounting a network share via fstab is more complicated to set up but will always perform better than using the built in network browser in Kodi. This is because the kernel based nfs/smb clients are a lot more efficient and do a lot more read ahead buffering than the user mode clients built into Kodi.
What you have to ask yourself is who/what you’re trying to protect yourself against if you encrypt your home directory.
You would typically do that on a laptop that might get stolen or lost to protect your data, however I’m not sure that it makes a lot of sense on an OSMC install.
The biggest threat would probably be password stealing by a malicious addon and regardless of whether that home directory was encrypted Kodi and thus the addon would have permission to read the file.
A more secure way would be to use a password file in the fstab mount option and have that password file be readable/writeable only by root, then at least Kodi (or anything running as the osmc user) doesn’t have access to it.
In retrospect, a better idea: I may move all my media to a non-passworded NAS for all networked media devices to easily access, and keep the passworded NAS for our personal stuff.
My worry was someone remotely getting into the pi and reading the NAS password. but I have changed the default password of the Pi to help fight against that. I host a website from home, so have a domain name pointed to my house, Just trying to make sure I’m not leaving myself open… plugging the holes…
Well if it is samba that would not work as non-password samba is not supported anymore.
But configuring different user/password for different shares makes sense.
Anyhow watchout on the add-ons you are installing as a foot in your LAN.
Thanks for the tip on add-ons,I’ll be sure to play it safe.
I think I’ll definitely split media away from personal… I also use Plex Server that allows me to remotely play music when away from home via the web app, this may also be a possible hole to fill.