mce planning: Parental controls and NAS mount/unmount

[thedaver]

Hi all!  starting the process to spec out and build an MCE, really looking forward to it!  I'll prob b asking quite a few questions for a while, appreciate all input (and patience)!

Q1) I saw a thread in the forum from mid-2007 regarding the implementation of Parental Controls; what's the status of Parental controls over what can be viewed (or even listed) in MCE?  Does the answer vary by media source?  (cable vs local media vs disk media vs. mounted media) 

Q2) related to parental controls, I have a NAS with a good bit of video media that I'd like to expose to MCE once it's built.  that NAS has two Windoze shares: 1) that's kid-friendly content, and 2) that isn't terribly kid friendly.  Currently under my linux desktop I just mount and unmount the shares to suit my needs.... what tools/strategies are available in MCE to deal with that? 

I kind of hope that the answer to #2 is related to #1 since that would allow me to leave the mounts active all the time and would let MCE manage viewing privs.... also dunno how upset MCE would be from a "library" or "index" perspective if a mount/share was enabled/disabled frequently... maybe that's my question #3?

Thanks again!
Dave.

[tkmedia]

media can be public or private just make your private shares private.


Tim

[colinjones]

media can be public or private just make your private shares private.


Tim

Although, to be fair Tim, this functionality isn't really working very well at the moment is it?! Do you know if any fixes made it into the alpha on that?

[krys]

I was also under the impression that private media shows up regardless, I have ripped movies to private and they were available to all users

[tkmedia]

works for music I don't see my kids rap ... hmm i have no pr0n so I haven't  tried it with video




Tim

[thedaver]

Can you gurus also comment on the issues (or lack of) that arise when a share full of media is mounted, acquired by MCE's library, and then unmounted, then remounted...   I have to assume this happens a lot (for maintenance if nothing else)..., just wanted to know your insights.  THX!

[tschak909]

LinuxMCE uses an autofs4 automounter, with a very short timeout.

This automounter has probably one of the most intricate scripts attached to it to mount the correct device the correct way, no matter where in the house it is...

due to this and the timeout, the disk is mounted when accessed, and then almost immediately unmounted when done. This was done to facilitate hot plug action.

-Thom

[colinjones]

The upshot of this automounting is that when the device is online, all the media in it is merged into the same media browser views with your other media. When the device goes offline, LMCE simply doesn't display that media any more. At worst this will only take until the next UpdateMedia scan marks the media as offline, which runs every 2 mins, but maybe even faster than that.

tk - in filename mode my "private" videos are simply not visible at all even after choosing the user and entering the PIN. You can only see them via tags. And if memory serves, you can still find them by searches even without switching to the user and entering the PIN... so from what I see, public/private does not work at all currently (at least for video) and hasn't for a long time.

[tschak909]

private mode works, the videos must be tagged with at least a title.

and you're right, private media is currently still visible during a search. A query change in the media plugin can fix this.

-Thom

[colinjones]

Thom - thanks for the clarification. Private media is definately not visible in Filename sort mode ... unless you mean even then you have to tag at least the title (which is counterintuitive with the rest of the system) as that what you meant? Can that requirement be removed so that it works like the rest of the media browser grids?

[tkmedia]

Colin if that is the case could you maybe define what works and what doesn't and submit a trac ticket to see what we may be able to fix for 0810. Be sure to select correct version of lmce when submitting.



Thanks


Tim

[tschak909]

by default, updatemedia will assign title as filename if there is no title attribute present.. sort by filename currently does not work in that mode because the root pathname for private media is different from public media. This needs to be patched. Again, Media Plugin is the culprit here.

-Thom

[colinjones]

ah ha, got it!

[totallymaxed]

The upshot of this automounting is that when the device is online, all the media in it is merged into the same media browser views with your other media. When the device goes offline, LMCE simply doesn't display that media any more. At worst this will only take until the next UpdateMedia scan marks the media as offline, which runs every 2 mins, but maybe even faster than that.
<snip>....

Your absolutely right Colin...we see this on Core's with say 4 x Data drives installed and also when we install NAS's. The problem is, as you correctly suggest, when the automounter un-mounts the drive the media from that drive will disappear...as UpdateMedia cannot differentiate between a drive that was unmounted because it was removed and a drive that was 'unmounted' temporarily by the systems. Once this has happened the user looses any access to the 'missing' media from the Orbiter... until something 'wakes' up the drive again and it gets remounted... then UpdateMedia will scan it and re-add it again.

Currently we use a 'hack' to get around this. We add a small bash script that runs at boot time and creates a screen session and then simply cd's into one of the symlinks to the device in /home/public/data/audio or videos. This keeps the drive mounted and available... its not very clean...but for now it works.

We plan to work on a more elegant fix asap ;-)

All the best

Andrew

[colinjones]

The upshot of this automounting is that when the device is online, all the media in it is merged into the same media browser views with your other media. When the device goes offline, LMCE simply doesn't display that media any more. At worst this will only take until the next UpdateMedia scan marks the media as offline, which runs every 2 mins, but maybe even faster than that.
<snip>....

Your absolutely right Colin...we see this on Core's with say 4 x Data drives installed and also when we install NAS's. The problem is, as you correctly suggest, when the automounter un-mounts the drive the media from that drive will disappear...as UpdateMedia cannot differentiate between a drive that was unmounted because it was removed and a drive that was 'unmounted' temporarily by the systems. Once this has happened the user looses any access to the 'missing' media from the Orbiter... until something 'wakes' up the drive again and it gets remounted... then UpdateMedia will scan it and re-add it again.

Currently we use a 'hack' to get around this. We add a small bash script that runs at boot time and creates a screen session and then simply cd's into one of the symlinks to the device in /home/public/data/audio or videos. This keeps the drive mounted and available... its not very clean...but for now it works.

We plan to work on a more elegant fix asap ;-)

All the best

Andrew

I'm not sure I was describing a problem here (not the one you are Andrew, anyway!)  ... I was trying to point out how LMCE presents and hides media correctly based on whether a source is genuinely available or not... ie a good thing