# Playing media across samba



## amtrakuk (Jan 13, 2020)

Hi there,

Can someone help me resolve this issue, I'm not able to play media files across a network from a server.  I'm able to connect to the remote share and open PDFs, pictures and other docs but no videos.

I tried VLC, this results in a MRL error, Mplayer errors with an error 2 - All I believe is file access issues.  I don't believe there is an active firewall.  I have tried installing other desktops with the same issue with the exception of GNOME3.  I have checked GVfs is installed - I'm not sure if that's appropriate to the problem.

At the moment I'm using XFCE, is there additional plugins needed for the file manager to allow the likes of VLC, Mplayer to play remote video files?  Like I say every other file format opens and saves to from the remote share ok.


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## mickey (Jan 14, 2020)

I was having very similar issues when trying to play media files from KDE's dolphin file manager. Just as you described it, regular files open fine just not media files, regardless of which player I tried. As far as I have delved into this issue, the problem is that SMB shares do not actually get mounted but rather each file is accessed individually, and for that authentification is required. To play a media file, the file manager provides the application an URL-style argument but that lacks the user credentials (having the credentials in the URL would also create serious security implications) and the application is usually not able to request credentials from the user on it's own. It seems the only solution would be to actually mount an SMB share, so that user credentials are only required once at mount time. I gave up on that matter and decided to use NFSv4 instead.


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## SKull (Jan 14, 2020)

That is weird. Do you have rx or only r permissions?
(smb user as well as unix user)


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## balanga (Jan 14, 2020)

amtrakuk said:


> Hi there,
> 
> Can someone help me resolve this issue, I'm not able to play media files across a network from a server.  I'm able to connect to the remote share and open PDFs, pictures and other docs but no videos.



Are you able to play mp3's?


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## amtrakuk (Jan 14, 2020)

I'll have a look when I get on the FreeBSD laptop.   I know its possable as GhostBSD works fine however not all my machines have 4GB of RAM


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