I have just set up a Debian media server to host my movie and TV shows through NFS, I used the following link to set it up -> http://ksearch.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/nfs-linux-mint/

Here is a copy of my /etc/exports file

/home/garrett/Videos * (ro,async,subtree_check)

When I try to play my movie files through my WD TV Live media box it sees the server and the directory but when I select the Videos directory the WD TV Live says 'There is no media available for playback'. This worked on my Mint desktop just fine but it's not working from my Debian server. Any ideas. I thought I might try to change the permissions to rw instead of ro just to see if that's the problem, if that's it then I'll have a new problem. I need to set up some kind of linked system that with rw permissions that point to my ro permissions movie directory.

I'm not sure how exports works, perhaps try samba?

As for permissions, a few guesses:
Does exports have it's own user for interacting with network shares? Eg. apache uses www-data.
If it does, does it have the correct permissions? If you want to have full permissions over it but not give everyone full access, try changing the group of the dir and permitting it read only.

The files likely have correct permissions, do but the directories? Directories require at least read & execute to access.

Also, check the hierarchy. For example, your media dir at /media/userhdd/mymedia is set correctly but /media/userhdd does not permit at least access, it will fail since it was never actually permitted to access mymedia in the first place.

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Any idea what user the WD TV Live is connecting as? Any errors in /var/log/messages? Are the files everyone readable, and the folders everyone rX? You may be able to increase the logging level of NFS, and see exactly what the WD is trying to do that is causing it to fail.

The '*' in that line in the exports file means anyone is allowed to connect, my understanding is it's either that or a specific IP address. Below is the tail end of /var/log/messages

Dec 23 00:28:11 media-server kernel: [ 11.132508] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
Dec 23 00:28:11 media-server kernel: [ 11.132513] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
Dec 23 00:28:11 media-server kernel: [ 11.132824] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
Dec 23 00:28:11 media-server kernel: [ 11.138069] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
Dec 23 00:28:11 media-server kernel: [ 11.138080] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
Dec 23 00:28:11 media-server kernel: [ 11.138086] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11
Dec 23 00:28:11 media-server kernel: [ 11.172133] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
Dec 23 00:28:11 media-server kernel: [ 11.172137] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
Dec 23 00:28:11 media-server kernel: [ 11.245672] lp: driver loaded but no devices found
Dec 23 00:28:11 media-server kernel: [ 11.252127] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver

And yes, everyone can execute the directories that contain the movie files and all the file are readable.
How could I increase the logging level of NFS?

My problems increased. Now the WD TV Live just keeps searching for a Linux share but it never shows up, it's like my NFS server isn't even running anymore.

Well I sorta solved the problem. I was keeping my movies in /home/garrett/Videos/Movies and I had my NFS server set to share /home/garrett/Videos/ I wanted to do it that way hoping that I could then add other libraries like 'Shows under the Videos directory. For whatever reason that doesn't work and I have to specify exactly what directory to share because it doesn't share sub directories.

Hi Garrett,

I have spent many hours (days, weeks, months) playing with my NFS setup and WDTVLive. When it didn't work it was the source of much of much frustration but now I have a working setup it is almost exactly what I wanted.

In short what you wanted, sharing a folder and the subdirectories to be shared too, is possible. A quote from my /etc/exports
There is more to it but in essence that is what I have. You may or may not be aware, by making your share read only the WDTVLive will not fetch cover art etc

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I mengoshmink I know it wont be able to fetch the meta data but I have an idea for that. I like to share on directory with the TV Live and make it RW and wrtie a script that auto fills that directory with links that point to all my .mkv file in my RO directory. That way as far as the TV Live is concerned it does have write access without actually having write access to my movie files, and I still get my cover art.

my etc/exports line loocks something like this -> /home/garrett/Videos/Movies *(ro,sync,subtree_check) I would like to know more about your /etc/exports file. When you write wdtvlive in you exports file is that an actualy Linux user that's built into the TV Live or is that just a directory you created to represent where you're keeping your files? Thanks.

Happy new year Garrett85!

Sorry for the late reply but I have been busy with a few of my own (unsolved) problems.

I like the sound of what you're trying to do for the metadata, would you be willing to share what you do? eg you're script etc

I have no users specifically for my WDTV Live device but I have a folder called wdtvlive just for the wdtvlive exports and also the hostname of my WDTV Live device is wdtvlive. Confused?

Folder structure:
/etc/fstab
/etc/exports
I hope that helps but let me know if it doesn't. I'm pleased to meet a fellow WDTV Live user who is using NFS and not CIFS for their device.

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mengoshmink I think I may have finished that script. If you think you might like to have it let me know.