[mythtv] Hostname change broke mythtv, yet alittle more complicated than sed can fix...

[Kenneth Padgett]

So it wasn't until after a change in hostname did I realize mythtv was
going to break everything and loose track of my settings, recordings,
everything basically, but even worse, it created new junk hostname
settings and such I need to get rid of!!!

The problem actually was caused by a swap out of routers and change in
reverse DNS (which is how my box has been getting it's names). Anyway,
the problem I have now is, through various router swaps/reconfigures,
the box has taken on 3 different names over the past year (3 different
routers w/ different DNS names wouldn't you know), and there's three
sets of settings. The ones I want is mythtv.local, the others are
pvr.lan and localhost.localdomain. The box is now named
localhost.localdomain as I realized naming the box on the router's DNS
is what was causing all this, so I give up with that. Also, I can't
easily go back to mythtv.local on my router, I know, that would be too
easy.

If I do the sed trick documented here:

http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-23.html#ss23.15

I'm going to end up duplicating settings table entries, and possibly
other things, since I need to go to a host name that mythbackend
apparently took it upon itself to start creating the moment the box
booted up with the new name.

At this point, all I really care about is the settings, previously
recorded shows, and recordings it should be recording (but claims I
haven't scheduled anything). What's the fix here? I fear duplicating
entries in the settings table using sed is going to cause unforeseen
issues. Can I do some magic command line on mythbackend and have it
figure this out on it's own? I didn't see a --renamehost in it's
--help or the docs/wiki. :) Recommendations from the dev's would be
much appreciated!!

Also, has anyone considered a better route for tracking the settings
per host, or maybe normalizing the DB so that the hostname is easier
to update? Or even a prompt when it first starts about creating new
settings and such for a new host name? I'd rather mythbackend have
errored out when it realized the hostname changed instead of just
creating new entires. Maybe a command line option required by
mythbackend to "name" your host, so no matter what the DNS changes to,
mythbackend knows it's own name...

Thanks for your time!