First I should say this post may cover a few different topics with questions I’ve had. This community is always great to find the information I need on, but this hasn’t been something I’ve had luck finding in other posts (forgive me if I have missed them).
I use HeresphereVR (sideloaded on a Quest 2) with a Handy and VR, with my main library SMB shared (windows media sharing) from a 2TB external HHD.
The main theme is looking to improve the way I store, manage and share scripts+videos with some added security. As mentioned, the SMB share works fine, I have it setup and is very usable, the reason I am looking to improve it is because there is little security in this method. I have the share permissions given to everyone with read+write. Are there any recommendations on how I could improve my situation? I’m not opposed to other methods of sharing, so long as it doesn’t impact the usability.
In addition to the peace of mind of added security, is there a more efficient way you manage your library? I have a decent folder structure, but are there other methods you find work well for you? Looking for a more efficient + secure solution, rather than one that improves tagging and organization of media.
I think that about covers the questions I’ve had, again apologies if these have been answered elsewhere.
I use xbvr to manage my library. There’s a guide on EroScripts on getting started too.
The main advantage is not needing to worry about file names. You associate a video, funscript, etc. with a scene in xbvr. These are presented through a lovely gallery interface in HereSphere. Funscripts are automatically sent to HereSphere and on to the Handy over wifi too. It’s fantastic.
xbvr does have password protection, but I’ve not used it so I can’t comment on its suitability for your needs.
XBVR like mentioned above may be the best in terms of usability and security after setup and getting used to it.
There are of course alternatives to SMB, like SFTP, which doesn’t require much setup.
For simplicity I would suggest to stick with SMB and making it more secure by restricting access. Or go with xbvr.
SMB Rant and explanation below.
Regarding SMB. It can be made safer by creating a new account in windows for just that purpose and restricting the share permissions to that user.
However, that can be a bit tricky in “Home” Licensed Versions of Windows and setting up the user on Heresphere/Quest may be a bit tricky (No personal experience).
Alternatively. If all you do is watch stuff from the shared folder and you aren’t changing/adding content on it from your Quest, then changing the permissions to just read may also be enough.
If you don’t want anyone on your network to see what is happening, then changing the permissions from “Everyone” to a user account and setting that up on your Quest is the only option while sticking with SMB.
I have no Quest, so I can’t tell how much effort it may be to set it up on a Quest.
Looks like that is what I’m looking for, I did see it on another post, but didn’t see a mention of security measures/data protection - so glad to hear that is supported!
Do either of you happen to know if XBVR hosts a SMB share by default? What I’m looking to avoid is having the unprotected media library available for anyone to find on my network just because they are connected to the network.
I could ask a thousand more questions of how to improve my setup/experience, but I’ll try my best to keep it to the main concerns I have/areas I’d like to make changes to.
Thanks again for both of your responses - they are very helpful!
P.S. If anyone happens to have a recommendation for accessing the media securely from an outside network that would be great too - I know there was mention of a free service called Tailscale in a post: Security advisory: Stashapp - #2 by roa, but I wasn’t clear on how practical it was.
P.S.S. Would also love to know if there is an IOS solution for accessing media files through XBVR or a SMB share - the Quest is great for the support for this, but realistically I find myself watching less and less actual VR content and don’t prefer using my VR as my main source of using Handy + scripts.
You point xbvr - running on a computer or NAS typically - at the files. It needs to have access, but that doesn’t need to be via SMB. xbvr serves the files itself to HereSphere.
Here are the auth options. I recall these only protecting the gallery view, but I could be wrong about that. If you wanted to protect the web interface and the auth doesn’t cover it then you’d need a reverse or auth proxy in front of xbvr.
Tailscale will definitely work for remote access. It will work from mobile devices as well. It’s easy to setup. I use it myself.
I don’t know of a good iOS mobile player that would handle VR → flat video conversion offhand. Hopefully someone else can suggest something - I wouldn’t mind having that option myself.
Thanks so much, working on getting it setup now - just have to link a ton of items manually which is giving me trouble, hopefully will get that working.
For IOS, 3D to 2D would be great, but even just to use my iPhone to watch 2D videos with a funscript that has the same ease as Hereshpere is more so what I’m after!
xbvr only matches on the filename scraped from the site. And it can’t get that filename from some sites.
You can get a StashDB API key from the Stash Discord. With that you can enable hash-based matching. That’s only available on the scenes xbvr is able to match to a Stash entry, but it does help.
Ah I see, the scrappers aren’t very useful for me as most of my media is named based on the name of the script to match a video. Do you know of anyway to manually connect these - I’ve looked at a few guides and posts but mine doesn’t seem to behave the same.
Seems like XBVR is mostly geared towards VR content, so that may be where I’m having issues to, most of my library is 2D.
Ah ok, I’m going to keep toying around with XBVR and see what I can figure out. I’ll try to post here to help out others in the future should they have the same problem.
Thanks so much @Islanti, you’ve been very helpful!
