Folder watcher on other machine

Configuration
1

Im using Hassio on a RPI3B+. I want to get a message in my HA front end when a file is copied from /backup to a Windows 10 PC with an USB disk named “G:”. Im planning to use

folder_watcher:
  - folder: <address to the G: USB disk on the Windows 10 machine>

but dont understand how to write the address correctly to the USB disk from inside the config.yaml file as specified above.
I now I need to specify the directory in the Whitelist too.
Anyone?

2

You have to set up windows to allow that. I suggest googling connecting to a windows network path from linux.

3

I will try that googling for sure. The PC is already sharing the USB disk so that part is solved. Its the actual format with its eventual http://… and so on I need to understand from someone already doing this. Thanks

4

It’s going to be covered in that google search. smb://server/path/to/location

1 Like
5

Yes, thanks! I found
smb://YOURCOMPUTERNAME/Users/YourUserName/ShareFolderName based on your suggestion. Will now be tested. :slight_smile:

6

I don’t want to rain on your parade, but I tried this a while ago and found that Linux couldn’t watch files on the Windows File System because they work differently. Maybe things have changed, and you get lucky.

However, what I did was mapped a drive from Windows to Linux, and have Windows write to that location rather than it’s local drive. Then watching for changes worked without problems.

7

According to the documentation of the underlaying Python module of the folder_watcher there is Windows support. There are no details about SMB but it could be that it falls back to periodically comparing snapshots of the directory tree.

@danlun, could you please add this to the documentation at https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/folder_watcher/ if it’s working as expected? Thanks. It could help other users :wink:

8

Fabaff, I most certainly will. And thanks all for help! I will test this week. Time is scares :slight_smile:

9

Hi, I have now some testing, but I don’t get by the configuration check in HA.

In my conf.yaml I write:

homeassistant:
  whitelist_external_dirs:
    - /config
    - /share
    - smb://pc-surf/users/dalu/pictures

but doing that I get this error when doing the normal test:

Configuration not valid, not a directory @ data[‘whitelist_external_dirs’][2]

I start wondering if “white list” can’t handle non-HA directories? Any input from you on this?