Using Aliases to provide different views for various CIFS shares

[bbenz3]

I have a WDTV Live SMP that is my primary device that I connect to the FreeNAS for video streaming. I would like to create a different "view" for it based upon the alias that it connects to and then allow other computers to connect and see all the shares. Essentially this is just a pet peeve of mine that I would like to limit the folders that you must select when looking for media on the TV. Ideally I would modify the mount point that the WDTV Live SMP was mapped to, but that has proven to be nearly impossible. If there is a way to associate different shares to a specific alias I would greatly appreciate the help.

 

[ProtoSD]

I think you may be able to do what you want using symbolic links (ln -s) and only linking the folders you want to present to your WDTV in the folder that you share to it.

You need to give some examples of how it is now and what you want it to look like. I don't use WDTV, so I'm not sure what you mean about not being able to modify the mount point that it maps to.

 

[cyberjock]

I have a WDTV Live SMP that is my primary device that I connect to the FreeNAS for video streaming. I would like to create a different "view" for it based upon the alias that it connects to and then allow other computers to connect and see all the shares. Essentially this is just a pet peeve of mine that I would like to limit the folders that you must select when looking for media on the TV. Ideally I would modify the mount point that the WDTV Live SMP was mapped to, but that has proven to be nearly impossible. If there is a way to associate different shares to a specific alias I would greatly appreciate the help.

Can you explain a little more on this? I have a WDTV, and I'm not understanding what you are trying to say at all. WDTV access SMB shares. If you want different places mapping then create different shares. For instance, TV_Shows might map to /mnt/tank/TVSHOWS and Movies might map to /mnt/tank/MOVIES. WDTV works best with 1 single mount point, so you might have better luck with a single share with TVSHOWS and MOVIES in the same folder. Then you just map the whole thing and open TVSHOWS or MOVIES depending on what you want to watch.

I really get confused with your comment "and then allow other computers to connect and see all the shares". WDTV has no sharing abilities of its own. It's nothing more than a watch-stuff-only glorified DVR box that uses your server for its hard drive.

 

[bbenz3]

Understand that I wasn't as clear as necessary so let me see if I can clarify. I would like to set up my FreeNAS with the following folders shared (simplified for this situation as I will have more shares):
Videos
Backup
Folder1

I would then like to restrict the WDTV device to only see the share labeled "Videos" and other devices would see all three shares...

I wasn't sure if this would be possible by setting up an alias so that any device connecting through "alias 1" sees just the "Videos" share and then devices connecting on "alias 2" could see all shares.

I'm asking as I just don't know if something like this is possible.

 

[JaimieV]

It's perfectly possible to set up like this. The WDTV won't care about the other shares, as you just configure it to use the Videos share.
Other clients with more intelligence will be able to see the other shares.

You can even nest shares: consider this setup,

/mnt/tank/AllMyStuff <-- share as AllMyStuff
/mnt/tank/AllMyStuff/Videos <-- share as Videos
/mnt/tank/AllMyStuff/Folder1
/mnt/tank/AllMyStuff/Folder2
/mnt/tank/Backups <-- share as Backups

Then you can use the Videos share on the WDTV, and the AllMyStuff share on anything else without needing to also mount the Videos share if you want to watch/put something in the videos folder from your laptop. Folder1 and Folder2 are also usable directly from the AllMyStuff share. You could put Backups inside AllMyStuff, or keep it separate - I keep mine separate.

 

[bbenz3]

I understand what you are trying to do, but the issue is with the way the WDTV box connects to a share. Instead of connecting to something like \\x.x.x.x\Videos it instead just connects to \\x.x.x.x\ and then allows you to select any shared folder on the server. Ideally I would do as you depicted and look for ways to do this, but the current devices are very limited in their configurations to simplify for the average joe. Right now my setup is:

\backup
\Pictures
\videos
\videos\movies kids
\videos\movies parents
\videos\tv shows

I plan on reworking some, but I would love to have the WDTV box only see the three folders inside the videos folder. The only other way to do this would be to have multiple instances of the CIFS server running, one for each ip alias.

Note: NFS isn't really a great solution as I am connecting to it via windows computers and the WDTV doesn't behave the same way when connecting via NFS vs CIFS.

 

[cyberjock]

That's a WDTV thing and not something you can fix in FreeNAS.

The best you can do is limit the access of WDTV to the folders via FreeNAS permissions.

 

[ProtoSD]

Just curious if you've tried unchecking the "Browsable to Network Clients" on all the shares except the one you want WDTV to see, just to see if that works.

 

[JaimieV]

My apologies, I've used a WDTV but no longer own one; I thought I remembered pointing it directly at a share, rather than a server.

Have you considered adding one of the media DLNA servers in a jail instead?

 

[paleoN]

Note: NFS isn't really a great solution as I am connecting to it via windows computers and the WDTV doesn't behave the same way when connecting via NFS vs CIFS.

How about read-only NFS for the WDTV and leave CIFS for Windows? Never used one so I'm not sure what behavior is different.

Have you considered adding one of the media DLNA servers in a jail instead?

I'd much rather deal with the shares than DLNA. Still it is an option.

 

[bbenz3]

Thanks for all the replies. I really have no desire to use DLNA, but I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do. I may end up trying NFS out again when I rebuild the NAS. The problem with NFS is also just a WDTV issue in that it displays meta data differently so you don't always get the nice pretty pictures for the movie folders but instead get blank folder icons. Additionally I didn't think the transfer speeds were as good when using NFS over CIFS.