[mythtv-users] UPDATED: Bash/MySQL script for copying and/or deleting mythfrontend profiles

Jeffrey J. Kosowsky mythtv at kosowsky.org
Wed Jan 13 02:13:56 UTC 2010


Mike Perkins wrote at about 21:34:26 +0000 on Tuesday, January 12, 2010:
 > Matt Beadon wrote:
 > >> BTW it works like a charm and now I can see my myth recordings on my
 > >> XP laptop -- woohooo....
 > >>
 > >> Here is an updated version of the code with some minor usability
 > >> enhancements:
 > >>
 > > 
 > > Great timing (for me)!  I just got my new laptop running last night and
 > > fired up myth FE only to realize that I'd have to spend ages getting the
 > > settings cloned from my existing FE before I'd be happy using it. :(  Then I
 > > found this thread, thanks!  Haven't run it yet but I will when I get home.
 > > 
 > I still have great difficulty understanding why anyone should be *cloning* the 
 > front-end settings at all, unless your new front-end is *identical* 
 > hardware-wise to the old one, and only differs by the name.
 > 
 > What's wrong with just installing mythfrontend and running it? It drops you 
 > directly into the setup screens, you fill in the details (which you have to do 
 > anyway somewhere when cloning) and then Bob's your uncle.
 > 
 > Why carry across a lot of cruft that will probably be wrong for your new hardware?

Well, I just had the "pleasure" of manually redoing all the
mythfrontend settings due to another unrelated thing I did that messed
up my database (I corrected it in a shortcut way by Michael Dean
suggested redoing from scratch) -- and even with *detailed* notes on
every single screen & parameter it took over an hour to go through all
the screens.

And worse, it's not obvious as you go through the screens, which ones
are frontend specific and which ones are shared across systems.

Even with non-identical hardware, I find that there are only a couple
of changes between systems that I can then easily tweak after my script.

Finally, when new version of mythtv require (or motivate) updating
settings, I can again do it fully only once and then use my routine to
clone it to other machines.

Of course, if you have *lots* of settings that differ among machines
then this script won't be helpful.

Interestingly, I find that *writing* a script like this actually makes
me *less* likely to have errors since it forces me to understand the
data better. In fact, it was this exercise and testing that uncovered
the independent issue I had due to my boneheaded partial restore
mythtv 0.21 program tables to a 0.22 config tables database.

But I'm not sure these arguments are productive -- there are valid
points to both sides and people will choose between the approaches
based on their use cases, fear of corruption, degree of dislike for
clicking through hundreds of screens, etc.


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