NTFS Shenanigans, or "How do I map a remote drive as local folder?!"
 

Ok I'm setting up a streaming MP3 server on my spare box, lets call it "Machine B". I've got all my MP3s on a different box, "Machine A", which has the MP3 folder as a network share. Both boxes use Windows XP.

Is there a way to map the network share on Machine A in such a way that Apache on Machine B will see it as a regular folder, and stream from it?

I've already tried NTFS links and junctions. They are fine for mapping stuff on the same box, but don't work for networked drives. All I want is for the network drive to appear as a folder somewhere, like you can do with partitions!

Can it be done?

this is probly over my head but did we ever try maping the drive on what ever pc u want to use it on? it just shows up at like g:\ realy easy on win xp. Just right click on my computer and map drive. Locate it on the pc it on and go. not sure if this will work for what u want but it might )

Oh that much I know, and tried. The problem with mapping it as a drive is that I have no way of accessing it within Apache's document root. It needs to be a FOLDER inside the document root, otherwise the program can't touch it.

Junction (a very cool undocumented NTFS feature) won't work on a mapped drive either, so I can't create a folder that will respond as if it was the drive itself.

EDIT: looks like I'm a bit late with this post,
It sounds like you want to mount the drive as a folder like they do in unix? Would that be a correct assumption?


If you do as smackre says and map a network drive to the shared folder it should work fine.

Note: you may want to make sure that reconnect on logon is checked and also that you have set up the permissions so that the share is accessible.

For the people who don't know (but may be interested), usually you map the drive in the form of \\machinename\share

Ok maybe I'm not being clear. Here's exactly what I need to accomplish:

MP3 server root:
D:\www\htdocs\netjuke

MP3 files:
\\station-two\mp3

I need the MP3 files to be:
D:\www\htdocs\netjuke\music

I can map the mp3 share to Z:\ or something, but thats no good. It needs to be inside the server root!

Hope that explain it better :)

The server can't see anything outside of the root. It is possible to set a local partition to be inside a folder within the root, and I am trying to accomplish the same thing with a share.

I'm reasonably sure you can't do that, best to just tell apache to rediect or something either with a vhost or an alias

I'm not runnig XP or a windows-hosted webserver but,
you could try to create a shortcut named D:\www\htdocs\netjuke\music
that points to Z:\ (which you then map your network share in)

If you set the permissions right it might work.
Other than that, I have no clue.

Thanks for all your replies, folks!

Here's how I managed to get the problem solved:
- Created new accounts on both machines with same logins
- Set Apache to use those accounts
- Created an Alias for the network share as a local folder

And it works! Woohoo! Now I've got MP3s on one machine being streamed through another. Kickass.

you can use the subst command to do this.

First map the shared folder as a drive (we will call it z:). Next create a bathc file that has the following line

subst z: d:\www.htdocs\netjuke\music

Now put that batch file in your startup folder and you should be good to go.