Mounting Network Shares (Legacy)

This guide will show you how to access media from your NAS on your OpenELEC computer and make them permanently available.

To mount files, we need to get access to your configuration files on the OpenELEC files.

Fortunately, OpenELEC shares this folder so you can access it from your computer (unless you've removed it previously).

If you have experience with Linux, you can use SSH to open a terminal to your OpenELEC machine (there are guides on how to do this elsewhere on the site); the configuration files are held in /storage/.config and you can use vi or nano to edit them.

OpenElec 1.0.x (Dharma)
If you don't know Linux, then you can simply follow the guides below. From a Windows PC, open an explorer window and browse to the IP address of the OpenELEC machine. If you don't know what the IP address is, go to the menu of the OpenELEC machine and click the "Info" button on your remote control (or the i key). This will open a page that shows the IP address, so type this into the address bar of the explorer window. For example, if your IP address is 192.168.1.92, browse to:

\\192.168.1.92

Once the window appears, open the Configfiles share. This will show you all the configuration files for your OpenELEC machine. The file in the Configfiles share called netmount.conf is the one we're interested in: it controls what's mounted on the OpenELEC machine when it boots.

'Open the file with a UNIX compliant text editor like | Textpad. Windows' built-in editors like Notepad and Wordpad may cause problems, so don't use them.'

The first section of this file is a quick explanation on how to use the file, but it's fairly simple:

service | share on server | local mountpoint | mount options

The different parts are:


 * service - the type of share on the server (CIFS or NFS)
 * share on server - the name of the shared folder on the server
 * local mountpoint - where the shared folder will be mounted on the OpenELEC computer
 * mount options - any username or password or other options (only for CIFS)

Note: If you're running a Windows machine to share from, you're using CIFS

Unlike Windows computers, Linux has to mount network shares into folders on the computer. There are a set of pre-defined folders that you can use to mount network shares into. They're all in the same place and are as follows:

/storage/music /storage/videos /storage/tvshows /storage/pictures

Unless you've used this previously, they're all available to mount into. If you don't want to use one of these folders, you'll need to create your own folder instead. This is more complicated, but if you look at the Useful SSH commands section in the documentation you can learn how to access your OpenELEC computer and create a new folder. You need to make sure you create your folder in /storage as you won't be able to make a folder anywhere else.

What we need to do is add a line to the end of the file with the required information. What you'll need is the IP address of the server, the share on the server and any options you might require, like a username and password.

Example 1:
If we're running a NAS or Linux server with an NFS share of /nfs/music, an IP address of 192.168.1.2 and we're going to mount it at /storage/music we'll have to add:

nfs | 192.168.1.2:/nfs/music | /storage/music

Example 2:
If we're running a Windows server (or Linux server with SAMBA) with a share called tvseries, an IP address of 192.168.0.30 and we're going to mount it at /storage/tvseries we'll have to add:

cifs | //192.168.0.30/tvseries | /storage/tvshows

Example 3:
Again, if we're running a Windows server (or Linux server with SAMBA) with a share called tvseries, an IP address of 192.168.0.30 and we're going to mount it at /storage/tvseries, but this time we need to use the username gilphilbert and the password mysecret we'll have to add:

cifs | //192.168.0.30/tvseries | /storage/tvshows | username=gilphilbert,pass=mysecret

Now, add your line to the end of the file, and make sure you use the | symbol to seperate the settings (on my keyboard, it's SHIFT and ).

Save the file with your new mount and close your editor. Save the file and close the explorer window.

Reboot your OpenELEC machine and when it comes back up, you should be able to add the source in as if it's a local source - when adding the source click 'Browse' then 'Home Folder' then the name of the folder you've mounted your network share into.