[mythtv] Why are themes downloaded to /etc/mythtv?

[Michael T. Dean]

On 12/09/2011 04:18 PM, Richard Shaw wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 6:56 AM, Stuart Morgan wrote:
>> I think it's reasonable to offer a $MYTHCACHEDIR - falling back to $MYTHCONFDIR
>> and ultimately $HOME. I'll commit something soon.
> I don't want to sound impatient but I wanted to ask if there's been
> any progress on this front? Should I put in a trac ticket for this?
>
> Until this happens I'm going to have problems with users downloading
> themes since as of Fedora 16 mythbackend no longer runs as root.
>

You wouldn't if you properly configure the directory structure.

If you want a shared config.xml, put it in /etc/mythtv/config.xml.

Then, in the HOME directory of the user who runs MythTV (I'll call this 
user "mythtv"), you can have a ~/.mythtv directory and symlink the 
"system" config.xml to that directory.  Since the mythtv user has 
permission to write to ~mythtv/.mythtv, it can create directories and 
files for themes/*.

Or, you can actually have the /etc/mythtv directory writable as only 
root, but create the (non-configuration) subdirectories (such as themes, 
themecache, remotecache, thumbcache, tmp, channels, and a directory for 
each of the plugins that requires a directory in ~/.mythtv/) with 
permissions that allow the mythtv user to write to them.

IMHO, sinice the only true configuration in ~/.mythtv directory is the 
config.xml, the first approach is much cleaner.

Mike