Android network share

[gareth_iowc]

Unless i'm missing something i am unable to navigate to a network share on android to scan for roms?

I have a network share that both nvidia shields and my pc load roms from.

The shares are mounted on the shield and retroarch can load roms but unable to view in android launch box.

Any ideas? 

[Jason Carr]

This is a known issue. We'll be fixing it soon.

[gareth_iowc]

Awesome. This is great news

[De1taE1even]

Oh man, I'm so glad y'all are working on this one!  I was so excited, bought the license, installed the app, went to import games via nvidia shield network share area, and couldn't.  Super sadface.  But then I found this post.  Can't wait to get this going!

[Kuro Houou]

One thing that will also need to be overcome is the ability to write to the mounted share as well.   I think step one is at least getting read access to the network share so we can at least play our games, but step two will be making sure we can write back to the mounted share as this is a little bit of an issue on the Shield, usually requires a custom smb client in the app I believe, which id be fine with.  This way you can write all the images/thumbnails/data for launchbox back to the NAS so its shared across all devices without having to download on every single device.  That said, thanks to the devs for working on at least prioritizing getting access to the mounted share so we can at least play games through launchbox   Anxiously awaiting using Launchbox on my Shields!

[LBdoubleB]

+1 this is the only thing holding me back from purchasing the license.

[Jason Carr]

1 hour ago, Kuro Houou said:

One thing that will also need to be overcome is the ability to write to the mounted share as well.   I think step one is at least getting read access to the network share so we can at least play our games, but step two will be making sure we can write back to the mounted share as this is a little bit of an issue on the Shield, usually requires a custom smb client in the app I believe, which id be fine with.  This way you can write all the images/thumbnails/data for launchbox back to the NAS so its shared across all devices without having to download on every single device.  That said, thanks to the devs for working on at least prioritizing getting access to the mounted share so we can at least play games through launchbox   Anxiously awaiting using Launchbox on my Shields!

To clarify, we currently do not have plans to write our own Samba implementation, or integrate a third party product for that. We only have plans to make the Shield's built-in network share solution work in the app, at least for now. Does that only allow read-only access? If so, it will only be read-only.

[Kuro Houou]

From what I understand of the Nvidia shield, using the native mount allows only read access yes..  which would mean we could read rom files, but writing to say a LaunchBox directory with thumbnails would not be possible as far as I know… I am not a dev so not 100% certain, this is only what I have experienced when trying to write to the native mount with other apps and what I have been reading online.

That said, as long as I can read my Roms I’ll still be happy, that is the 100% blocker for me right now.  I just bought some 256GB micro sd cards to use in my Shields which should be plenty for any thumbnails or other media files LaunchBox may download in the future.

Thank You for the work to at least read from the mount though, can’t wait to use LaunchBox on my Shields around the house!

[De1taE1even]

@Jason Carr I think that'd be good enough for the Nvidia Shield use case.  I'll test read-only vs read-write later today when I'm in front of it.  But if it is read-only, do you see any obvious issues with this?  Where does LaunchBox normally write all the metadata when scanning?

 

EDIT: Confirmed the Nvidia Shield network store is read-only, even though I authenticated to it with a registered user with write permissions on the NAS.

Edited August 30, 2021 by De1taE1even

[Jason Carr]

26 minutes ago, De1taE1even said:

@Jason Carr I think that'd be good enough for the Nvidia Shield use case.  I'll test read-only vs read-write later today when I'm in front of it.  But if it is read-only, do you see any obvious issues with this?  Where does LaunchBox normally write all the metadata when scanning?

 

EDIT: Confirmed the Nvidia Shield network store is read-only, even though I authenticated to it with a registered user with write permissions on the NAS.

Thanks, good to know. Importing ROMs will not be an issue, but you won't be able to put your LaunchBox folder (with media and such) inside of the network folder if it's read-only. You'll only be able to keep your ROMs on the network storage, not the media.

[De1taE1even]

29 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Thanks, good to know. Importing ROMs will not be an issue, but you won't be able to put your LaunchBox folder (with media and such) inside of the network folder if it's read-only. You'll only be able to keep your ROMs on the network storage, not the media.

Great thanks for the info.  By default though, where does LaunchBox save the metadata?  Is it going to try to download the metadata to the same location that the ROMs live by default?  Just trying to make sure I won't run into an issue when the ROMs are scanned.

[Jason Carr]

5 minutes ago, De1taE1even said:

Great thanks for the info.  By default though, where does LaunchBox save the metadata?  Is it going to try to download the metadata to the same location that the ROMs live by default?  Just trying to make sure I won't run into an issue when the ROMs are scanned.

It creates a LaunchBox folder either in the root of the SD card (priority), or in the root of the internal storage.

[De1taE1even]

2 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

It creates a LaunchBox folder either in the root of the SD card (priority), or in the root of the internal storage.

Gotcha, so other than having multiple copies of the metadata on multiple devices, the read-only network share should be fine.  Is the metadata folder location configurable?  Like, if I nerdily found a way around the read-only issue (I have some ideas).  Thanks again.

[Jason Carr]

7 minutes ago, De1taE1even said:

Gotcha, so other than having multiple copies of the metadata on multiple devices, the read-only network share should be fine.  Is the metadata folder location configurable?  Like, if I nerdily found a way around the read-only issue (I have some ideas).  Thanks again.

Yes, it's configurable.

[De1taE1even]

1 minute ago, Jason Carr said:

Yes, it's configurable.

Great!  Thanks for the info.

[Jason Carr]

Hey all, I could use some help with this. I've added a network share to my Shield under Settings > Device Preferences > Storage > Mount network storage, but I can't find any of the folders from any shares in a file manager. Where do the shares show up after you mount them? How do you access them?

I'm hoping to be able to add this stuff today, but I need some help because I can't find any of the mounted shares.

[Jason Carr]

Lol, okay, so Retroarch can see it, but apparently my FX file manager can't. Probably not a good sign that this is going to be easy.

[De1taE1even]

Hmm, that's odd, both RetroArch and eXplore can see it on my shield.

[Jason Carr]

6 minutes ago, De1taE1even said:

Hmm, that's odd, both RetroArch and eXplore can see it on my shield.

Yeah, ended up finding it. Just that it's buried deep in the FX file explorer for some reason. I think I'm good to go to get this added.

[De1taE1even]

3 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Yeah, ended up finding it. Just that it's buried deep in the FX file explorer for some reason. I think I'm good to go to get this added.

Fantastic.  I'm happy to help test, just let me know.