[mythtv-users] Shared DVD across network using NFS

Rod Smith mythtv at rodsbooks.com
Mon Nov 10 20:33:24 UTC 2008


On Monday 10 November 2008 02:09:22 am Per Jørgensen wrote:
> Hey Guys.
>
> In my setup at home I've started using these machiens as frontends: ASUS
> EEE B202
>
> Thiose machines doesn't have a DVD-drive in them.
>
> BUT - I have an external DVD-drive based on USB2. Is it possible to
> mount that on one of the frontends and afterwards sharing it to all my
> frontends using NFS.

I'm not positive, but I believe that NFS is insufficient to do this because of 
DVD encryption issues. (At least, for commercial DVDs with encryption; it 
might work with DVDs you burn yourself without encryption. In this case you 
could create a mount point for an exported DVD in your videos directory on 
the frontend and view it as a video.) I've not tried it this context, but I 
suspect that network block devices (NBDs) may enable you do do what you want. 
For more information, check these URLs:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3778
http://nbd.sourceforge.net/
http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7118

(FWIW, I wrote the last of those.) Once you set this up, you could (in theory) 
tell MythTV that the NBD device (/dev/nbd0 or whatever) is your DVD drive. It 
should then work transparently -- in theory. I keep saying "in theory" 
because I've not tried this, so I don't know how well it will work in 
practice.

-- 
Rod Smith


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