Shares and Symbolic links?

[Tight_wad]

Can I set up a file structure like this to have different access to my movies but only one network share:

 

Disk 1

    VIDEO Shared (movie files here)

    Main Index Shared (this would be the share that I have my Media streams point at)

          Alphabetical listing (symbolic link for each movie)

          Genre

              Action (symbolic link for all action movies here )

              and so on (about 20 different genres all together)

          New Movies (symbolic link for any new movies installed)

 

Disk 2

    VIDEO Shared (movie files here)

    Main Index Shared (this would be the share that I have my Media streams point at)

          Alphabetical listing (symbolic link for each movie)

          Genre

              Action (symbolic link for all action movies here )

              and so on (about 20 different genres all together)

          New Movies (symbolic link for any new movies installed)

 

And so on for all the rest of my disks.

 

If I did do it like my above example, then wouldn't the share combine the alike directories.

 

I have been doing a lot of searching on symbolic links, but a lot of what I found is older info.  But if I have read correctly, you can use symbolic links, but they can not be used linking from one drive to another.  If I can in fact go from one drive to another, then that would total change my thinking.

 

So am I going in the right direction, or total miss the boat?  Is there a better way?

 

Thanks for any direction!

 

[bubbaQ]

Yup... I do something similar and it is all done with symlinks so everything is accessible from one disk share.

[Tight_wad]

Is there an add-on or anything that will help make symbolic links for my files?  Or do I have to create them all one at a time?

 

I am use to using a program in windows called Link Shell Extension, but it doesn't work apparently for these.  I can make symbolic links of directories from UnRaid with it and place them on my Vista computer, but the same ones can't be place on the UnRaid itself.

[bubbaQ]

Uhhhh.... I don't think we are talking about the same thing.

 

You create symlinks at the shell prompt in Linux with the ln command (or with a shell like midnight commander).  You can not make symlinks on Linux from Windows or a share.... you have to log in via telnet.

 

 

 

 

[Tight_wad]

I wasn't sure if that was something that was able to be done in Linux or not. Hoping, but not sure.  I guess if I want to set up anything like I have now, there will be more than 5000 symlinks to make.  I would say that I will have a lot of work ahead of me.

 

Thanks for the reply

[BRiT]

It may be a lot easier for you to just use XBMC or something similar for the front end since it will provide all those desired views and much more regardless of physical directory and file system layouts.

[Tight_wad]

Not sure that the XBMC is compatible with my Tvix 6500 media streamers.  And all though this has not been an expensive build, I can't afford to replace 3 streamers.

[BRiT]

I didn't know you already had streamers. The TVIX streamers don't feature their own metadata scrapers to present your media files in alternate layouts? Do they only play media directory off file shares? I figured all media streamers should feature this by now. It's certainly a lot simpler within XBMC/Plex.

[Joe L.]

I didn't know you already had streamers. The TVIX streamers don't feature their own metadata scrapers to present your media files in alternate layouts? Do they only play media directory off file shares? I figured all media streamers should feature this by now. It's certainly a lot simpler within XBMC/Plex.

Yes, but there are many of us with older media players, and although they do not have the flashy graphics, they play media quite well.  On my older MG-35 media players the media "browser" is basically like file-explorer.

 

The use of "links" works quite well.  Hard links are only usable within the same file-system.  Symbolic links work across file-systems.  To create the first you type

ln file other_dir/file

 

to create the second you type:

ln -s file other_dir/file

 

The last time I tried, symbolic links were not followed in the unRAID user-file-system.  I've not tried recently since I simply set up hard links on the individual disks.  That however might be a setting in SAMBA (to allow/disallow following of symbolic links)  I never bothered to investigate further.

 

I illustrated my script in this post: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=6318.msg61370#msg61370

 

 

I set up my sets of links for two specific sets of holiday movies (Christmas and Halloween) and for letter ranges of movie titles (My older media browsers cannot easily scroll through 1000 movie titles so I present them in ranges.

 

 

[Tight_wad]

I have been doing some reading on some different Linux sites.  And one of the ways that some show was to use the find and execute to automate it some what.

 

At command prompt

------------------------------------------------

mkdir /mnt/disk1/alpha

cd /mnt/disk1/alpha

find /mnt/disk1/VIDEO -type d -exec ln -s \{\} . \;

 

------------------------------------------------

 

If I have been reading correctly, this would give me a symbolic link for each of my Movies.  I won't begin to say that I understand all that this line says, only a little of it.  I was wondering if anyone has used something like this?

 

- type should be d not the f that I had