Samba with Media Services

UPnP is all the rage with many devices, TVs, etc. The lack of device-specific MKV support makes it less and less desirable to make one-size-fits-all deployment. I have Mediatomb setup to push files to my PS3, but it's prone to failure or error when I use it to transcode MKVs.

That's pretty vanilla, but I am using MKV more and more, and I needed a way to push them direct to my display software & hardware, without breaking the PS3. Enter Samba.

Samba is great, but I wanted to aggregate the videos and shows the same way I can in Mediatomb. Enter syminks.

Symlinks are great, but I have data spread all over the disk. So, we use Samba's excellent rule-breaking technology to uncork the goodness.

I created a Directory called "Samba", and I man soft links to the media folders, spread across all my volumes, which I wanted to export to XBMC and Boxee via SMB. Then I adjusted the Samba config to handle all the symlinks. This page is for posterity, and to recall my own thinking.

The Interesting Config Bits

[global]
  unix extensions = no


[Media]
 path = /data/Samba
 guest ok = ye
 read only = yes
 follow symlinks = yes
 wide links = yes
 forceuser = media