Retroarch: support to CIFS volumes.

[ricardo85x]

Today it very hard to have a device with cifs support on kernel.
But many file managers support CIFS.

So it would be a great PLUS to have support to run your roms from a CIFS volume(NAS).

[ToadKing]

We are not putting a file system library into RetroArch. Just use Samba.

[ricardo85x]

ok.
The problem most android device does not have samba support on kernel to mount volume.
so even with a rooted device we cannot mount a volume. And we are limited to the SDCARD.

So what about support file open?
We could use some file manager with cifs support and choose to open the rom file with retroarch.

[ToadKing]

Searching the app store I see a bunch of apps that can already do this, either through actual mounting of CIFS volumes or through synchronization. Adding a Samba library to RetroArch just for CIFS support will bloat the binary even further and add another place for bugs to appear.

[Themaister]

Agree with @ToadKing. Baking in an entire file system driver is hilariously bloated.

[ricardo85x]

Hi ToadKing. The app thats 'mount' a cifs requires a kernel module on the device. Also it need root.
And it is not a good ideia to sync a SAS with 4T with my memory card with 64GB.
So today if your device does not have the kernel module, you can't use yours roms from your SAS directly.
Even if you guys think it is not a good ideia, do you think it is possible to be done and play the games directly from the NAS? Or the possible solution will first download the game to temp directory on your device and load the game.

[ToadKing]

Whatever the solution is, it is not something RetroArch will do. Find another app that does what you want with CIFS volumes. I saw more than one that didn't require root or kernel modules.

[ricardo85x]

Sorry
I can't speak English well enough and maybe I am not speaking politely There is app that can browse cifs volumes and does not require root. I would like this functionality on retroarch since the app that already browse the cifs volumes does not let you play roms like retroarch. Also we can not use this app and "open with" using retroarch.

[OMGsus]

Mounting CIFS is not the job of RetroArch, nor should it be. Mount the CIFS with another application / library and you can open from the mount like any other file. CIFS mounting will not be in RetroArch.

On Feb 9, 2014, at 12:29 PM, ricardo85x [email protected] wrote:

Sorry
I can't speak English well enough and maybe I am not speaking politely There is app that can browse cifs volumes and does not require root. I would like this functionality on retroarch since the app that already browse the cifs volumes does not let you play roms like retroarch. Also we can not use this app and "open with" using retroarch.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[ricardo85x]

Ok
I understood and agree.
But using another app will require another kernel with cifs support to mount a volume and root. Or a way to start retroarch from command line with ROM path and Core. The last approach will copy the ROM to a temp folder.

[frankzzz]

Using Retroarch on an Android TV device (shield) right now, and this would be a very useful feature. There is no way to do this without rooting or manually syncing files back and forth right now.

To draw another analogy, if Kodi couldnt mount samba volumes, it would be useless on most of the devices I run it on (android/ios devices, specifically).

[fr500]

hmmm I can't mount cifs on kodi android...

[fr500]

Anyway we'd need a portable, open source, complete cifs library written in C to even get started

[deviant-studio]

I'm suffering with Android TV Box too.
Almost all modern android video players support samba protocol. Kodi, VLC, also bunch of file managers like X-Plorer, CX File Explorer etc.
I don't see any reason why similar feature can't be implemented at least as pluggable module.
It's not a problem to mount samba resource on the desktop OS like Windows or Ubuntu. But it is real pain in the ass to create mount point in Android. Now i forced to copy/paste whole ROMs set into tvbox local storage. This is the only local content i have. Everything else (movies, photos, music) is stored in the NAS.