Single Mount With Access To All Media Spaces

EditShare version 2023.1.0 introduced the possibility to create a single mount with read-only or read-write access to all media spaces on EFS by mounting the Views/all_spaces_1 subdirectory of EFS. To have this feature enabled on your system, please reach out to EditShare support.

A common reason for this functionality to be desired is so a backup application on a separate client would have access to all the Media Spaces and be able to copy the content elsewhere. This feature would make in unnecessary to have numerous mounts on that system and also not require an additional step each time a new Media Space for the user with this access to gain access to it. This is not an intended workflow for regular EditShare users who are doing typical editing work.

Notes:

• AvidMXF spaces are not available in the share with all spaces. All of Unmanaged, Managed, ACL, and AvidStyle spaces are supported though.
• Notifications about new files do not work with this special share. This means that when you have the Windows Explorer window open showing files in one of the space subdirectories, Windows Explorer won't automatically refresh the view when other users add or delete files in that directory. The refresh button works though and refreshes the list of files. Similarly, when the special share is used by some application that relies on those notifications mechanisms to perform some actions, the application may not work correctly.

About the special share with access to all media spaces

The share with all media spaces contains one directory for each media space, named <Space Name>_1. On systems with FLOW enabled, there's also a FLOW directory with all FLOW files (proxies, database backups, etc). Spaces are not grouped by type – spaces of all types are visible in the share next to each other. Contents of each media space are available directly in the subdirectories, i.e., there's no intermediate Content directory.

The share can be accessed using either the EFS or the SMB protocol. In case of EFS mounts, they can be read-only or read-write; an SMB share is available in the read-only mode only. The FLOW subdirectory, if present, is always read-only. Here's how the share looks like when mounted on Windows:

To have this feature enabled:

Reach out to EditShare support with the following information:

1) The name of an already created user you'd like to have these privileges. If you'd like it to be a hidden user, please specify your desired hidden user's name and a password so that EditShare staff can create that user for you.

2) Whether you'd like this user to have read-only or read/write access to the mountpoint.

After this feature has been enabled on your system, use the following examples to mount the share on a Linux, macOS or Windows workstation:

Mounting the "All Spaces Share" on Linux (ESOS, Ubuntu, RHEL) using the EFS protocol

The recommended way is to use an /etc/fstab entry to mount the share with all spaces using the EFS protocol whenever the machine starts. To set this up:

• Have the feature enabled with a specified user as described above
• Install the efs-client package (version 2023.1.0 or newer) suitable for your Linux distribution (not needed on EditShare OS; it's already pre-installed). We provide EFS Client packages for Ubuntu, CentOS/RHEL, and Debian. You can download the package from the Software tab of the landing page of any EditShare server.
• Create a text file with the password of the user that you created for mounting the share. You can choose any name for the file. Here's an example:
  $ echo "secr@tPassword!" | sudo tee /etc/efs-all-spaces-secret
• Change the file's owner to root:root and permissions to 0600 (otherwise EFS will refuse to read it):
  $ sudo chown root:root /etc/efs-all-spaces-secret
  $ sudo chmod 600 /etc/efs-all-spaces-secret
• Add an /etc/fstab line in the following format:
  mount-efs-client  <mountpoint>  fuse host=<server>,user=<username>,password-file=<path>,subfolder=Views/all_spaces_1,_netdev  0  0
  The last two fields (0 0) are optional. See /etc/fstab documentation and man mount-efs-client for more information if needed (the latter explains all the mount options). Here's an example:

• To test if it works:
  $ sudo mount <mountpoint>
  $ ls -l <mountpoint>
  $ sudo umount <mountpoint>
• If something does not work, look for EFS client's logs in the system journal, e.g.:
  $ journalctl -b -t efs-client --since=-10m

Mounting the "All Spaces Share" on Windows using the EFS protocol

• Have the feature enabled with a specified user as described above
• Install EditShare Connect version 2023.1.0 or newer on the Windows machine. You will not need to use Editshare Connect GUI but installing it installs EditShare client for Windows and sets up the required drivers.
• Use the following command to mount the share:
  "C:\Program Files (x86)\EditShare\EditShare Connect\EditShare File System.exe" --host <server> --user <username> --password <password> --subfolder Views/all_spaces_1 --log-file <log-file-path> <mountpoint>
  When using PowerShell, prefix the command with & to execute it; see the screenshots below. You can also use a script in the language of your choice (Batch, PowerShell, VBScript, etc).
• <log-file-path> should be a path to the file where the EFS client will log to. It can be, e.g., some location in C:\Users\...\AppData\Local. The log file is optional but without it logs are not written anywhere.

• When <mountpoint> is a drive letter followed by a colon (e.g., E:), all spaces become available as subdirectories of the drive:

• When <mountpoint> is a name not followed by a colon, spaces become available as subdirectories of the local UNC path \\.\<mountpoint>\, e.g.:

• Additionally, a network UNC path \\EFS-<server>\EFS is created in both cases described above:

• To unmount, use net use <mountpoint> /delete, for example net use E: /delete (when mounted as a drive letter E:\) or net use EFSSpaces /delete (when mounted as local UNC path \\.\EFSSpaces\).

Mounting the "All Spaces Share" on macOS using the EFS protocol

• Have the feature enabled with a specified user as described above
• Install EditShare Connect version 2023.1.0 or newer on the Mac. You will not need to use Editshare Connect GUI but installing it installs EditShare client for macOS and sets up the kernel extensions.
• Use the following command to mount the share where "username" is the specified user you had enabled for this feature and "workstation_username" is the logged in user on the workstation:

'/Applications/EditShare Connect.app/Contents/Resources/efsmount' -H <server> -S /Views/all_spaces_1
--log-file=/Users/<workstation_username>/Library/Logs/EditShare/native_client_log_all_spaces_1
--tls=yes '--tls-ca-dir=/Applications/EditShare Connect.app/Contents/Resources/es_connect/resources/certs/'
--local-hostname=<workstation_hostname> -U <username> --password=<password>
--minimal-directory-permissions=2770 --minimal-file-permissions=660
--enable-distributed-file-range-locks=yes -o fsname=//<username>@EFS-<server>/all_spaces_1
-o max_readahead=1048576 --enable-distributed-file-locks=yes --block-files=.Trashes:.Spotlight-V100
-o fssubtype=226 -o volname=all_spaces_1 -o 'volicon=/Applications/EditShare Connect.app/Contents/Resources/EFS.icns'
-o allow_other -o defer_permissions -o daemon_timeout=600 -o iosize=8388608 /Volumes/all_spaces_1

Mounting the "All Spaces Share" using the SMB protocol (cross-platform)

Mount the SMB share named "All Media Spaces" available on your EditShare server in the way which is the most suitable for your application:

For accessing the share, use credentials of the user created described above. The All Media Spaces share is a read-only share so even when it is mounted by a user with read-write permissions, it will not be possible to modify anything there. Use the EFS protocol when read-write access is needed.

For additional questions, please reach out to EditShare support.