[mythtv-users] Best way to delete a slave BE?

[Michael T. Dean]

On 11/21/2009 11:45 AM, Matt Emmott wrote:
> My slave BE is my HD-PVR machine, and I'm planning on rebuilding it 
> with better hardware. I plan on keeping the hostname and IP but I 
> don't care about the recordings, channels or tuners on that box. I'm 
> planning on starting from scratch.
>
> However, it's my understanding that the master BE adds a field 
> (column? Not sure exactly) for each slave BE, which is how other FEs 
> know where to go for recordings et al. I'm wondering what the best and 
> / or easiest way it would be to blow away all traces of the slave BE 
> so I don't experience any weirdness with the new box like phantom 
> recordings, theme directories being the wrong versions, etc.
>
> I'm not good with SQL at all, but I'm not afraid to tear into it with 
> some guidance, if that's the only way to clean things out. I've 
> considered blowing away my master BE and starting everything from 
> scratch with MythBuntu Karmic, although if cleaning out the slave BE 
> info is easy enough I may leave the master BE as is.
>
> Thoughts, suggestions appreciated.

Best way is to do the following /before/ decommissioning that host:

a) Go to Watch Recordings or Delete Recordings, then, individually go 
through each recording and find the ones on the to-be-decommissioned 
host and delete them.  There's really nothing to help you do this, yet.  
If you like, you can shut down all mythtv programs (frontends, remote 
/and/ master backend) and then run (make sure you change the hostname as 
appropriate):

cat << "EOF" | mysql -umythtv -p mythconverg
UPDATE recorded SET recgroup = 'LiveTV'
 WHERE hostname = '<your hostname>';
EOF

Then, restart the master backend, then restart your other backends and 
your frontend.  Then, go into Watch Recordings, change the filter to 
show the LiveTV recording group (if necessary), then select the LiveTV 
recording group (which should now contain all of this host's 
recordings), then MENU|Add this group to the Playlist, then 
MENU|Playlist Options|Delete and allow rerecord (or just Delete, as 
desired).

b) Go to mythtv-setup, Capture Cards, Delete all capture cards on <this 
host>

c) In mythtv-setup, Storage Groups, Delete each storage group listed 
(hit D after selecting the group name)

If you want to start settings from all defaults, you can optionally:

d) Run the restore script's --change_hostname to change the hostname 
from the "good" hostname to a "garbage" hostname (i.e. some name you'll 
never use).  See 
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Database_Backup_and_Restore#Change_the_hostname_of_a_MythTV_frontend_or_backend

Really, there's not a big benefit to doing d), so I would recommend you 
don't, and you can just reconfigure the settings how you want 
them--either way, you would need to go through all the settings to make 
sure they're correct for what you want.

Mike