[mythtv-users] mythweb conf.php example, please

Mercury Morris mercury.morris at gmail.com
Mon Jun 13 18:36:49 UTC 2005


On 6/13/05, Chris Petersen <lists at forevermore.net> wrote:
> > Yes, I have read the README, quite a few times.  It is a source
> > of great frustration.  If indeed as you claim, that there need be no change
> > made, then I question why the author would put the line into
> > the conf.php file.  For the last ten months, I have struggled with this file
> > and in all that time not one reply to all the requests for an example of
> > this line being filled in properly has ever been posted to this forum.
> 
> The author is me, and I put it in because SOME people feel need to
> manually override this because they can't/won't set up apache properly.
>   As the inline comment says, the rest of you shouldn't need to touch it.
> 
> I don't recall seeing this question more than once, many months ago, and
> then nothing (keeping in mind that I don't tend to notice mythweb
> questions unless "mythweb" is in the message subject line) -- when the
> question stops, I assume it's been answered.  Most people in the mythweb
> community with unanswered questions on the mailing list (this is not a
> forum) tend to go to forums or the irc supprt channel (#mythtv-users on
> irc.freenode.net, where most of your questions can be answered
> interactively in real-time by one of a dozen friendly people)
> 
> Merely asking for the line "filled in properly" is the wrong question.
> By default, it's filled in properly, as long as you, as the directions
> above the line say, set up canonical names properly in apache.
> 
> > It seems extremely unfair to keep this line in the mythweb package
> > without providing even the most trivial example of it properly modified.
> 
> I'm sorry if this sounds like an insult to your intelligence (please
> don't take it as such), but I assumed that anyone modifying that line
> should be able to follow the directions, and infer from the other
> commands in the file how to do that:
> 
> // The domain of this webserver, for cookie validation and other things.
> // If you don't have "canonical names" turned on in apache, you need to
> // set this to the name or IP you use to access this server, or session
> // data will not work.  Turning on "canonical names" in apache's
> // httpd.conf is the preferred option.
>      define('server_domain', $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']
>                              ? $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']
>                              : $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);
> 
> to:
> 
>      define('server_domain', 'mythbox.example.com');
> 
> > I'm sorry for sounding emotional, but it's the unfairness that gets to me.
> > In years of providing software to customers, I have always tried to look
> > at the product as if I were one of them (a customer).  When a software
> > package confuses me, makes me angry or frustrated, I try to improve it
> > so the customer won't be confused, angry, or whatever.
> 
> Installing web packages is not an easy job.  It's not like an
> application where you can just assume control over things like the
> domain name of the server -- all of that needs to happen within the web
> server (which doesn't have to be apache, but usually is), and that's up
> to the user to figure out how to do.  The best I an do is set up the
> mythweb config file with defaults that work 99% of the time.
> 
> I'm sorry if you find this frustrating, but no where in your original
> message did you ever say that you actually TRIED to get mythweb up and
> running, and failed (at which point, you would have some sort of error
> message, or at least a description of what didn't work).
> 
> > I'd just like to see an example of this line included in the mythweb package.
> 
> I'm not going to change it for the < 1% of people who need a custom
> setting.  Those who do, should already know what info needs to go in there.
> 
> On the other hand, I do plan to change mythweb so that it relies on user
> logins instead of cookies for tracking preferences.  But since I also
> maintain a handful of other open source projects, not to mention have a
> full time job, a couple of for-pay side projects, a house, a yard and a
> wife, it might be awhile before I can find the time to do that.

Chris,

Thank you very much for your candid and complete reply.

Mythweb is up and running, mainly due to the contents of
conf.php.  That is, your instructions are quite good and I thank
you for giving the MythTV users a very useful tool.

Ten months ago, I had Mythweb up and running on an old system
that used all RPMs.  I knew nothing of how anything worked then,
everything just worked!

This year, I am using all CVS versions and want to know how everything
works, so I pressed (a bit too hard) for an answer to the conf.php item.
It took me three tries to get Mythweb up this time.  After each try, I went
back to the conf.php file, compared my work with the steps you have in
there.  Each time, I had to correct something, and one less error message
came out.

Finally, Mythweb came up beautifully, and I was able to accomplish the
ultimate goal of deleting a channel, using Configure -> Channels.

Thank you again for your kind, considerate reply.

-- 
MM


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