Boxee Box and DrivePool shares not working

runewa

I'm having problems with my Boxee Box and shares created within DrivePool. When browsing to these shares from my Boxee Box, I see the shares but they contain no files. If I manually share a folder on my WHS 2011, the shared folder is then displayed with all files and everything works OK.

I get no error message from the Boxee Box, and there is no entry in the logs (at least none that I can see). I believe this started after the last few updates, everything was working fine up until a couple of weeks ago.

I'm not sure where there problem lies (Boxee Box or Drivepool), but since shares created directly on the WHS 2011 works, and shares created using DrivePool does not, I'm leaning towards DrivePool.

Anyone else experiencing something similar? Is it possible to download a previous release of Drivepool?

Thanks.

Johre

I have a Boxee as well and it seems to work fine on my WHS2011 the latest version of drivepool.  However i do find that even with the user info saved i have to manually re-enter it every now and then.

runewa

Johre, I've seen the same thing happen to me occasionally, the need to manually re-enter uid/pw info.

Good to hear that everything else is working as it should for you, sadly that is not the case for me

DrTone

Have you updated the Boxee to the latest firmware, they have been fixing SAMBA issues for quite some time an the latest again has more fixes.

runewa

Yes, I've got the update from Oct. 24th (I believe it is). Did a manual scan for new updates last night, but found no new updates. Even ticked the box to accept beta releases, but nothing.

Thanks for your input, though.

Shane

Did the option in DrivePool to reset permissions on the shares have any effect?

runewa

No, I'm afraid not. I've also tried adding a new user on the server and assigned read privileges to the shares with no luck.

I did a clean/fresh uninstall/install, but the problem is still there. I'll try reverting the Boxee Box back to factory settings tonight, maybe that'll do the trick.

runewa

So, I did a factory reset, but with the same result.

However, I did some experimenting and if I create a new share directly on WHS, or create a share NOT located in the pool using the DrivePool add-in, everything works just nicely. But, a new share located in the pool will not work.

Any ideas?

sagig

I have the exact same issue. previous version of drivepool worked fine but after the upgrade the shares on the pool show no files.

HELP!!!

runewa

What I ended up doing was to manually share each folder under ServerPoolPart.{guid} on each of my drives and then add all these shares to the media library of Boxee Box. Boxee Box will then scan the new shares and merge everything as if it was reading a single share.

Not a perfect solution by far, but at least Boxee now reads all my files. Guess we'll just have to wait for a new release of DrivePool and/or Boxee Box firmware and hope for the best...

chiefmillso

Yep - can confirm this problem as well with Boxee Box.

DrTone

One thing you could try is creating a small pool and share using the demo version of drivebender and see if boxee box reacts the same to it.  If it does or doesn't you know where the problem lies.

runewa

Last time I uninstalled DriveBender I ended up losing all my data on one of the disks, not doing that again. I probably did something wrong in the process, but still.

I have, however, created a share using DrivePool, but I placed the share outside of the pool. This share is read ok by Boxee.

To summarize:

Shares created by DrivePool located within the pool - not working.

Shares created by DrivePool located outside of the pool -  working.

(Shares created manually on the Home Server - working.)

Paaland

I'm using the Boxee Box with DrivePool on WHS 2011. I have three shares all in the pool. The Boxee sees them just fine.

As someone has already mentioned the Boxee has had buggy SMB support in the last firmware releases. I've entered my network username and password under the network settings on the Boxee. If you have not already, try that. I have not created a special Boxee-user, but just uses the administrator user of WHS.

Also try to reboot both the Boxee and the WHS server.

runewa

Thanks for your input. I've rebooted both Boxee and WHS numerous times but sadly that does not fix the problem. I've also tried entering the network uid/pw. I've tried the admin user, the special Boxee-user I had before everything went south and a newly created user, but to no avail.

sagig

I can confirm the same. tried different users including the admin, setup it up under the network setting including theworkgroup name. nothing works. this happened after i upgraded my boxee firmware and the drivepool version so not sure what got it to stop working. maybe a combination of both.

Very frustrating.

runewa

I upgraded both Boxee and DrivePool at the same time as well, so it's really hard to tell where this fails. Boxee is able to read shares created outside of the pool, but not shares created within the pool. So shares are being read, just not pooled shares. Beats me.

Guess we'll just have to wait for a release of either Boxee or DrivePool and see if this update has any effect at all.

MaDgamEr

It seems to be DrivePool guys... My boxee has been updated since Oct 24th (last release). Today when I updated my drivepool, bam... Same symptom as the rest of you folks. So to summarize:

• Folder is part of pool, then files added: Contents blank on boxee;
• Folder is loaded with files then moved into pool: Contents blank on boxee;
• Folder out of pool and loaded with files: Works on boxee;
• Folder moved out of pool with files: Works on boxee.

Hope this helps. Would this be worth listing as a bug?

runewa

Yup, you're describing the exact symptoms I'm experiencing. If you'd like to submit this as a bug please do!

MaDgamEr

Done...

Alex

Don't have the boxee hardware here, but tried to reproduce with boxee software on Win 7 and mac. Seems to work as expected with both M3 (all optimizations on) and M4.

One thing to try is toggling the fast directory listing to see if that's having any effect.

----

Here's a story about SMB, perhaps it will help.

I do recall that some months ago (around 6 to 12 mo.) Microsoft pushed out an update with their Windows Live suite of software that actually changed the way the SMB protocol works! This change broke most SAMBA clients out there. SAMBA is typically used in the open source world and many embedded devices to connect to and access UNC shares on Windows. My impression is that it's near universal.

Just to be clear, SMB is the Microsoft protocol used for file sharing and SAMBA is the open source "implementation" (more like reverse engineering) of that protocol. Of course now SMB is an open spec. so there's no need to reverse engineer anything.

In any case, this really upset me because all my portable devices essentially stopped working with Windows shares. I did some heavy duty digging under the hood in Windows to try and figure out what had caused the incompatibility. After some hours with a packet sniffer and a SMB protocol spec, I noticed some extra bytes being added on a very low lever communication attempt.

Essentially, SAMBA was asking Windows, give me a list of shares, then Windows replied, X, Y, Z ... Then it said, open X. And Windows replied with an almost standard message, except it added a few bytes at the end. Well SAMBA did not recognized that as a valid response and treated it as garbage, so it retried a few more times and then gave up.

I briefly tried to find the exact DLL in Windows that was responsible for this change but it was pretty deep and I didn't want to spend too much time on it. I ended up uninstalling Windows Live and was satisfied with that solution.

I wonder if something like this has happened again...

In any case, discrepancies like the above where something works outside of the pool and not on the pool should be greatly minimized in M4 due to the new architecture. M4 will will fit like a glove over NTFS and should provide for maximum compatibility. It'll be interesting to see how it fares once it's out.

lee1978

Hi

I had a similar problem with my ACyran box's i found this command on the net and it worked for me after i had aplied a windows update

Run this command from the server

netsh intip reset c:\resetlog.txt

i hope it works for you all 2

 

Lee

AnalogJ

Alex, your solution worked perfectly, enabling fast directory listing made everything work properly.

MaDgamEr

Any chance you want post your exact settings? I tried togglin the fast listing option on DrivePool and unfortunately didn't see any changes. :-S

runewa

I can confirm that Alex´ tip works! I enabled Direct File I/O and Fast directory listing, but disabled Read striping.

I first ran  netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt  , but that did not solve the problem.

Everything is back to normal, finally!

MaDgamEr

I can confirm that Alex´ tip works! I enabled Direct File I/O and Fast directory listing, but disabled Read striping.

I first ran  netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt  , but that did not solve the problem.

Everything is back to normal, finally!

Awesome! Worked exactly as advertised. Thanks Alex and runewa!

Zaffor

I found that when I enable Fast Directory listing my files do show up on the Boxee but it only shows a portion of my folders. It does the same on my WDTV.

Yet when I disable Fast Directory listing I can see all my folders on WDTV but nothing on the Boxee.

Anyone else run into this?

Prelector

Yes, I've seen this partial listing behavior on my Mac server, when trying to browse the WHS share.  Turning off Fast Directory fixed this.

chiefmillso

I've got the partial listing behaviour with my boxee and WHS with Fast Directory. All files that I copied with TeraCopy to the WHS share do not appear - but if I use explorer copy and move a file off the share and back on - problem solved.

JazJon

In M2/M3 I've had ongoing funky shares problems viewing shares from my xbox 360 in dashboard mode and or media center extender mode.  For example, I'm unable to create a new pictures playlist in my xbox 360 media center extender, but I can create one on my media center computer directly.  (but I can create one, if I pick photos from anywhere but drivepool shares.   I'm fairly confident the new M4 will make everything fully compatible for the long run.  Can't wait!

marvin

I just downloaded the M4 beta.

My Netgeat NeoTV 550 can't see any movies on the pooled shares.

It worked with M3 with the Fast directory option disabled.

(but the option is missing in M4 (I think))