Shared storage of media info, watched (etc) for multiple Vero4k+

Help and Support
1

Does setting up shared storage folder(s) for multiple Vero4k+ still require SSH or other non-menu-driven advanced techniques?

I have 3 Vero4k+ and it would be nice to be able to watch from any device and have it updated with what I already watched on another device.

Also, pause and resume from any device would be nice.

I have only a very limited knowledge of Telnet, SSH or whatever it’s called, to drill into the guts and “reprogram” it.

Is there a wiki or post, for how to do this for newbs? I browsed the whole “How To” channel and didn’t see a guide for this.

Thanks.

2

All media watched on the 3 Vero4k+ is stored on one common NAS, on same network.

Maintaining 3 local copies of all the media info, thumbnails, etc. seems inefficient.

3

https://kodi.wiki/view/MySQL

4

In BOLD at the top of linked page:

NOTICE: This is considered an advanced (complicated) and experimental feature.

5

Hi,

For this to work you need a shared library, for this you need to use mysql.

The link I’e provided is a good starting point.

Your nas probably has mysql or mariadb, so this would be a good place to the mysql server. If not you could run it off one of your vero4k+:

Thanks Tom.

6

FYI - using this here without problems.
Mysql on my NAS, all medias shared through NFS v4

1 Like
7

For whatever reason, they haven’t changed the wiki…MySQL for Kodi isn’t “experimental” any more.

And, as long as you run MySQL on a system that isn’t exposed to the Internet, then it’s not really very complicated, as you don’t have to change any defaults if you don’t want to. You just make sure MySQL is installed and running, then skip to step 6 on any of the “Unix” installs to create the user for Kodi. After that, all config is done on Kodi using the GUI.

9

Thanks everyone, I’ll give it a try.

10

My NAS is a QNAP TS121, firmware version 4.3.3.0724 (build 20181029). In its Control Panel it has SQL SERVER and states it is MySQL 5.1.73 It has an ‘Enable’ box to check… done. Under this I can optionally also Enable TCP/IP networking. I do not know if that should be checked. Left it unchecked. If it were checked, I could then optionally fill in a port number. That text is greyed out because the box is not checked.

I then looked on the above linked wiki page (https://kodi.wiki/view/MySQL) for further instructions and there is no mention of QNAP. It lists the following:

Contents
1 Ubuntu Linux
2 Arch Linux
3 RedHat based Linux
4 RaspberryPi Raspbian
5 Mac OS X
6 Windows
7 Other NAS — {QNAP not listed}
8 FreeNAS and freeBSD

So, I am stuck.
Any tips?

11

You need to enable TCP/IP. The port should default to 3306. If not, set it to 3306.

12

You need to enable TCP/IP. The port should default to 3306. If not, set it to 3306.

DONE.
But still stuck on the wiki instructions, which do not mention QNAP.

13

At this point, you should be able to follow the Linux or generic NAS instructions.

14

At this point, you should be able to follow the Linux or generic NAS instructions.

There are 3 sections for Linux:

1|Ubuntu Linux
2|Arch Linux
3|RedHat based Linux

…and as I mentioned, the other one…

7|Other NAS

…does not refer to QNAP.

15

Well the section
* Get into the MySQL command line utility: mysql -u root -p
* Enter the following commands:
1. Type in: CREATE USER 'kodi' IDENTIFIED BY 'kodi'; and press return
2. Type in: GRANT ALL ON *.* TO 'kodi'; and press return
3. Type in: flush privileges; and press return
* Close out the command line tool with \q

Is actually identical for all the different Linux ones. So if you can connect to your QNAP command line (e.g. via ssh) execute these commands. The root password for mysql is admin unless you changed it.

16

I’ve set up on a different tack. I use Emby server on my nas station (synology in my case but qnas is also directly supported).
On the Emby web site follow the instructions for the server. It then sorts your media library, adds metadata (including parental guidance certificates)
On OSMC units install Emby add on and this takes over library management, no need for MSql.
Then the Emby server package sync playback across all Osmc units with the Emby addon. Hence stop on one osmc unit and continue where you left off on osmc another. Recent media played, new media, etc all centrally managed. I’ve used this system for a couple of years and it’s been very stable. For me the benefit was parental controls for the media. Sorting kids movies from parent movies etc.
I found this route fairly plug and play.

18

EMBY sounds a little like PLEX, the latter of which I could never get to work properly.

Having to use ‘SSH’ is exactly what in my OP was hoping to avoid. Don’t know how to do that yet.

What would be better is something more normal-consumer-friendly, where one can use a simple GUI menu-driven wizard. The Vero4k+ could “do everything” by asking to install an app (or whatever) on my NAS. Better still, the second (and third) Vero 4k+ should auto-detect the first on my network and then automatically ask the user if they want to set this up.

I’ll see if I can figure out SSH. Thanks for trying to help a non-programmer.

19

My NAS (QNAP as described above) has SSH. I enabled that, and used “PuTTY.exe” to open a session and logged in successfully. Got the following:

[~] # mysql -u root -p
-sh: mysql: command not found

As I mentioned above, I already enabled mySQL (on the NAS) and checked the box to allow TCP/IP, and the port was left as the default 3306.

20

On the QNap you usually have a Mysql Frontend (web-UI - sorry, don’t have a QNap for 3 years now).
Go into the webui, and make sure you get a SQL console where you enter the commands.
Should do the trick.

21

My QNAP NAS is running the latest firmware available to it, but the device itself is a few years old. Anyways, it had preinstalled mySQL which was able to be enabled, but that version is 5.1.73 and it appears mySQL is now up to v8.0.13.

I’ve no idea if the current version of mySQL can be installed onto my NAS. Probably can but that’s likely another project in of itself. The download page for mySQL is here.

Once mySQL (v5.1.73) is enabled, you get a message (on the QNAP NAS) that you can install “myPHPadmin” to manage your mySQL server. However that doesn’t work. Not right away.

This person “HANS” in an old 2013 thread provided nice instructions for getting it going. Things look different now and are in different places but more or less, you have to also enable “Web Server” on your QNAP NAS. The default username + password for mySQL (which I never changed) did not work, so I had to reset it – there’s a link/button to click on the mySQL page on the NAS --and then I was finally able to use myPHPadmin.

Note, the version of myPHPadmin used, is v4.0.10.20 – Older version compatible with PHP 5.2 and MySQL 5. Does not support PHP 5.5 or newer. Was supported until April 1, 2017. Read about that here.

“Hans” also has an article about this same topic, but it also is from 2013.

As Hans points out, within myPHPadmin there is a tab called “SQL” that allows you to copy & paste and click “GO” to execute the commands listed in the kodi wiki, namely:

  1. Type in: CREATE USER 'kodi' IDENTIFIED BY 'kodi'; and press return (click GO)
  2. Type in: GRANT ALL ON *.* TO 'kodi'; and press return (click GO)
  3. Type in: flush privileges; and press return (click GO)

And then after that, you can click on the USERS tab to see that the user ‘kodi’ was created. On that same tab there is a button called ‘Add User’ but I did not do that because as a newb I am trying to explicitly follow the instructions.

That’s as far as I’ve made it.

22

Next step on the Kodi wiki, is File Sharing from the NAS.

Back when I first started with Vero 4k (not the “+”), when I tried to add media sources – folders on this same NAS – to the Vero 4k, for whatever reason I could not get SMB or NFS to work.

In support of trying to get it to work, on the NAS, I had done my best to open up full/read/write access to any device from within my network. Under Shared Folder Permissions on the NAS, I granted the widest possible access 3 different ways:
(1) NFS host,
(2) WebDAV, and
(3) Microsoft Networking host.
This is not a forum about an older QNAP NAS so I won’t go into further detail, for now.

In the end, what did work from the Vero 4k side of things, was to use “ZeroConfig” so that’s what I’ve used ever since, including on the 3 newer 4k+ devices. For clarity, I gave away my older Vero 4k and now have none of those.

I can play videos (etc) on each individual Vero 4k, that are stored on my NAS. I have no media whatsoever local to any Vero 4k.

Does this mean that I already have file sharing set up? Proceeding as if ‘yes’.