Crouton: VLC doesn't play from SMB share

[mlozier]

Hi!

Love the crouton concept! Only problem that I've had thus far is that VLC will not play any video files from my SMB share. My Samba server is the Synolog DS212j NAS. I can connect to it just fine, but when I attempt to play a video file, I only see the first frame of the video. The video will not play.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

[dnschneid]

Could you post the output of the croutonversion command?

[mlozier]

Hi!

Thanks for writing back.

Here's the output:

crouton: version 0-20131001173116~master:d511b339
release: precise
architecture: armhf
host: version 4319.96.0 (Official Build) stable-channel daisy

[dnschneid]

You might be running into #59. See if installing the updated libmad0 helps.

[mlozier]

OK, I get sound now! VLC will play MP3s, even from my SMB share. Still have the same problem with videos (all formats, MPEG, AVI, anything...)

[mlozier]

I've been researching this a bit more. mplayer will play a local MPEG file, but I can't get it to play from off of the SMB share. I would still prefer to use VLC, but if mplayer will work, I'd be happy with that too!

[dnschneid]

Did this ever work out for you?

[mlozier]

Hi,

No, unfortunately it did not. My guess is that the only way to correct
this problem is to download the smbclient source and then recompile on the
Chromebook, but I never went down that path.

On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 2:33 AM, David Schneider [email protected]:

Did this ever work out for you?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/dnschneid/crouton/issues/401#issuecomment-28046441
.

[kobemtl]

I got the same problem. not able to copy file from smb share, so I guess VLC not play smb share is normal in this case. I am new to Linux world, is it anybody tell me where to download smbclient source code please? I'd like try to recompile it and see if it fix the problem. many thanks.

[divx118]

I have no problem with streaming from smb shares. I tried it on unity precise with vlc. My chromebook is a HP chromebook 14 with intel processor. What I did notice is that in nautilus I cannot browse to my share, I did get “Failed to retrieve share list from server” . I could however add it manually through File -> Connect to server. When I then try to open a video file from the file explorer. I got a permission denied. Only thing that worked was starting vlc from the command line and add manually the username and password to the smb url. Like smb://username:password@your_smb_server/your_path
I have also krusader (alternative file explorer) installed which works much better with smb and also I can open video files from smb shares in vlc from there.

Although I don't use vlc much for media playback. I have a chroot with only xbmc for that. which also handles my smb shares very well. BTW my smb shares are located on a synology DS213j nas station.

[kobemtl]

I think its only happen on arm processor chrome book. x86 has no problem.

on my samsung 303 I have no problem connect to any smb share drive. but if I try to copy anything it interrupt every time.

[dnschneid]

It's possible smb isn't implemented portably such that it's broken on ARM. It's probably worth filing a bug upstream.

[xYuunaX]

Samsung Chromebook ARM here:
Streaming from SMB with mplayer works fine for me, took a little while to get Samba working though. I'm using mplayer2 with smplayer front-end. Mplayer needs to be closed (won't play any file unless its closed), and run the file from the smb folder via Nautilus/Thunar. Also in order for me to watch the videos at a decent framerate, I have to use the X11 video output, but don't expect 720p/1080p content to run smoothly.

Also to browse my files, i have to type smb://192.168.X.X/ manually into the browser. Trying from Windows Network results in “Failed to retrieve share list from server”.

Hope this helps.

[R3vXX]

Not to resurrect an old thread, but if anyone has this same issue and was wondering, you can make it work by following these directions: http://jorisvandijk.com/2013/vlc-wont-play-smb-shares/

Summary:

1. Open VLC
2. Go to Tools > Preferences
3. Under the header Show Settings (bottom left), select the All button
4. Select Input / Codecs > Access Modules > SMB on the left
5. Enter credentials

This got VLC playing videos via samba for me.

[stillmattwest]

None of the suggestions on this page work using straight ChromeOS. I'm just saying to save people time. I'm sure they work fine with Crouton / Linux.

[HubKing]

I tried the comment of "R3vXX commented on Aug 9, 2015", and it worked. But the problem is that there is only one credential, not per shares. So, I cannot use two SMB shares.

Also, this is very awkward. I have already saved the credentials (permanently) for that SM share in the file manager (Thunar), and shouldn't it be used by all applications on the system, like in Windows? I know I may not complain about software I use for free, but this is very, very anti-user-friendly. I mean, I installed the SMB plugin from the Software Manager, and I dragged a file from a SMB share on the file manager to VLC. It only showed something like "An error occurred, check the log for details." And I had no clue where the log was.

A Google search gave me some txt file on the Windows profile, but in my case it is Linux. I kept searching and found that there is no log file in Linux but I must see it in "Tools -> Messages". The developer of the error dialogue just assumed an average user just know there the log was. Why couldn't he just put a details button to the dialogue?

I examined the log and found something like "access denied". Why couldn't the SMB module just show credential-input dialogue instead of failing? And there was no hint how to solve the problem. So I had to search Google again and found this page. The credential-input was buried deep in the preference dialogue (not even be accessible from the default view).

I mean... it seems as if those developers assume all users are just as knowledgeable as themselves.

[sargenthp]

I know this is old... But want to get this out here since I was having the same issue.

Turns out I need to install the package gvfs-fuse. That will make a mount point under the user folder to allow applications to access the CIFS share.