Help, Kodi can not share more than 19 SMB root folders for CoreELEC

Hi all

I have been having such a nightmare sharing folders from windows to CoreELEC using SMB. I have followed all the guides as I created a user with a user/password in windows then shared the folders with that user. Now using kodi in windows to windows is fine as I used this for 20 years as you can add 32 folders as I have 16 drives and each drive contains 2 folders one movies and one tv shows which are sheared in a total of 32 shared main root folders

Now I upgraded to a minix box with coreELEC and have been pulling my hair out because this is what happens

  1. I add each movie folder in file manager with the user and password no problem, so I have 16 folders (movies server storage 1 to movies server storage 16)
  2. I add each TV folder in file manager with the user and password no problem, so I have 16 folders (TV Shows server storage 1 to TV Shows server storage 16)
    In total 32 root folders shared.
    Now the only 19 folders will work the other 13 folders keep asking for user name and password the only way to get them to work is to remove them and add them back but the problem with this is once I do that another 13 folders that where already added now do not work and now they ask for user name and password

It seems windows and CoreELEC do not support more than 19 root folders added as SMB shares but windows to windows does as I used that for years.

Is this a bug or a limit of how CoreELEC can support root folders.

Front end using minix and latest nightly kodi and windows 7 as the server.

Hope you can help as I think maybe know one has added more than 16 drives with 32 root folders to share but there does seem to be a 19 root folder limit or bug as windows supports more than this

I have even tried the old way of adding folders using windows SMB in the videos and that has the same problem.

Thanks for any help

Update

Yep. Removed all folders and just added 19 root folders and double checked them all worked. Added the 20th folder root share which was accessible but then one of the other roots was again not working so it seems there is a 19 root folder share limit or bug one of the two as windows and kodi does not have this problem only CoreELEC but not sure if it’s a kodi bug or android thing.

Why?
Just add one Movies share and place all movies in subfolder there. Enable Movie content in Kodi and the option each folder have one movie. Done.

Same with tv-shows.

I had that thought about that so created two folders called movies and another folder tv shows and within them root folders dumping 16 shortcuts to each drive root folder but when I added these two folders to kodi they are empty.

i have 16 drives that are all full so i cannot dump other movies and shows folders into the same single folder on one drive

so eg lets take two drives just to make it easy
Harddrive (D)
Root folders:
Movies (D)
tv shows (D)

Harddrive (E)
Root folders:
Movies (E)
tv shows (E)

this is my setup with 16 drives in total and 32 root folders i tried to make a shortcut folder and placed shortcuts to one drive meaning one folder but it does not see the shortcuts.

Why you have shortcuts to the movie folders in movie folder? Place all the movies in the root of your share Movies. But as I said you need to enable this option that each folder do have a movie or it without find the movies.

Regarding samba and number of shares: maybe this helps? Is there a limit to Maximum clients who can access a Linux Mint based Samba folder share? - Linux Mint Forums

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yep that the problem i am having

i don’t understand what you mean as if i dump all my movies and tv shows in the same root of the drive say D: no folders and just the movies and tv show folders will be mixed up and you will never be able to set the content type.

or are you saying if each drive has the same folder name it will combine the share eg

Harddrive (D)
Root folders:
Movies
tv shows

Harddrive (E)
Root folders:
Movies
tv shows

Edit.
Just Tried That Did Not Work still sees them as separate folders

why would they limit the connections, slow down or problems? wonder what the max settings is ? is this set by CoreELEC

do i put this in the putty window
testparm -sv | grep “max connections”

You don’t get how it works. You will need only one share for one content type. It works since ever.
I have 4 shares, movies, TV shows, Pictures and music.

By the extra Watchdog addon it’s even better as it live update if you like add or delete movie in the share folder.

2 Likes

Cheers for the help

I know there is 4 share types of media but I have 16 folders for movies and 16 folders for TV shows as i have 16 hard drives that are not pooled as one and you cannot combine them. Every folder you add to SMB share counts as 1 and windows is locked to 20 that why i could not get it to work as i needed 32.

We must be thinking of two different things. I think we are at cross purposes but I am not adding one folder in the videos media say movies content and then creating another movies content with the next folder meaning 16 movie headings I am not.

I am adding 16 folders under one type eg movies so using the add button then search for the drive and folder and then again add another one until all 16 are added under one source eg movies. But the problem with that is it still counts as 16 shares regardless if it’s under one media type and does not count as 1 SMB share and the same goes for the tv shows meaning 32 shears under two source headings movies and tv shows but it’s still classed as 32 SMB shares

as posted here
Shared folder on Server reached the max 20 connection limit - Windows - Spiceworks Community

But I got it sorted i think, time will tell but it looks to be working. On every drive i have two shared folders movies and tv shows that 32 SMB folder shares. so Instead I created a New Folder on each drive called Server D1, Server D2 and so on up to Server D16.

I dropped the movies folder and tv folder of each drive into that single new folder meaning only 16 SMB folder shares containing 2 folders movies and tv shows. then in videos i added each source folder to their correct type eg movies folders to movies and tv shows to Tv shows.

I have read up that window 7,8,10,11 only allow 20 shares as well and if you want unlimited you need windows server.

the reason i can only use 19 out of 20 is i think kodi installs a windows SMB share stright away so that might be why i could only add 19.

So it looks like i can add another 4 drives in the future but after that i might need windows server.

Heck you didn’t even need that granular. It’s literally one sub-directory per share per content type.

No idea why the OP is making this so complicated. If you set it up right, it’s literally one share per drive path (letter) on the local Windows server.

Yep I know that now using one folder on each drive as I never knew that there is a 20 SMb root share limit but just in case anyone ever has this problem In the future it’s good to know

Never had that problem on a windows to windows machine but window to CoreELEC problem exists.

Thing is if you go over 20 hard drives your screwed unless u have windows server or pool the drives into one drive I suppose.

I don’t think there are much people with 20 hard drives not switched to a RAID and have stored media on all of them. Better clean up one hard drive and move all media to it?

Yep. Need to look into it for the future to see what my options are. But at least it’s working now but what a headache to figure Out why.

Cheers for the help and suggestions though.

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