I'm using Kodi on my HTPC connected to unRAID servers via LAN. To avoid drives spinning up and lengthy searches for new media I did enter all individuals drives as sources (sources.xml). This means I do have lots of source entries like:

 

smb://TOWER/disk1/Movies/
smb://TOWER/disk2/Movies/
...
smb://TOWER/disk1/Series/
smb://TOWER/disk2/Series/
...
smb://TOWER2/disk1/Movies/
smb://TOWER2/disk2/Movies/
...
smb://TOWER2/disk1/Series/
smb://TOWER2/disk2/Series/
...

The opposite would be:

 

smb://TOWER/Movies/
smb://TOWER/Series/
smb://TOWER2/Movies/
smb://TOWER2/Series/

 

This has advantages and disadvantages:

 

+ You click on a movie and unRAID immediateley starts to play - always. No search, just one disk will be spun up - if it's not already up.

+ If you add a movie to a specific disk you just search for new items on that disk. No need to search on all disks.

- I need to put new items on specific disks. Else I would need to search the whole array.

- I can't use the cache feature because I don't know where the mover puts new items.

...

 

How do you guys work with Kodi? Individual drives? Complete array? What's your experience?

 

Thanks.

 

I think you're making it harder for yourself. Try installing the folder caching plugin.  That will allow you to browse your media without disks spinning up.   That way you can use user shares rather than lots of disk shares (Kodi's a pain in the ass as well as it doesn't let you put multiple paths in one share)

3 minutes ago, DZMM said:

Kodi's a pain in the ass as well as it doesn't let you put multiple paths in one share

huh?  since when?  I've always had multiple shares within all my libraries

11 minutes ago, Squid said:

huh?  since when?  I've always had multiple shares within all my libraries

multiple paths not shares e.g. you can't do:

        <source>
            <name>Music Videos - grownups</name>
            <path pathversion="1">smb://192.168.30.2/other_media/music_videos/grownups/</path>
            <path pathversion="1">smb://192.168.30.2/other_media/music_videos/all/</path>
            <allowsharing>true</allowsharing>
        </source>

you have to do:

 

        <source>
            <name>Music Videos - grownups</name>
            <path pathversion="1">smb://192.168.30.2/other_media/music_videos/grownups/</path>
            <allowsharing>true</allowsharing>
        </source>
        <source>
            <name>Music Videos - all</name>
            <path pathversion="1">smb://192.168.30.2/other_media/music_videos/all/</path>
            <allowsharing>true</allowsharing>
        </source>

Maybe pain in the ass is a bit rich, but I was annoyed as the wiki says you can do multipath sources and it took me ages to work out why it wasn't working, until I found an obscure thread on the kodi forum where they took a vote on whether to remove support

 

 

Edited March 14, 20188 yr by DZMM

Ah.  I've always done custom playlists that look for something like /grownups/ or /all/ in the path from the library to account for something like that.

6 minutes ago, Squid said:

Ah.  I've always done custom playlists that look for something like /grownups/ or /all/ in the path from the library to account for something like that.

 

yeah I do that when I'm in my profile and I'm with the kids and we want to see what films they can watch without having to swap profiles

Thanks for your answers.

 

Do you mean the Dynamic Cache Dir Plugin?

 

What parameters do you use and do you include user shares? There are several 100.000 files on my 22 drives. If Kodi requests a file, do you think it's really in cache then...

 

Hmm, will give it a try.

 

The cache isn't on your cache drive.  The defaults on the folder caching plugin should be fine, which doesn't cache user shares

Thanks.