[mythtv-users] mythmote App and minimyth

[Michael T. Dean]

On 08/16/2012 12:12 PM, Mike Perkins wrote:
> On 16/08/12 16:05, Paul Gardiner wrote:
>> On 16/08/2012 15:42, Mike Perkins wrote:
>>> On 16/08/12 08:22, Paul Gardiner wrote:
>>>> On 16/08/2012 03:32, Raymond Wagner wrote:
>>>>> If MiniMyth actually does not provide a copy of mythtv-setup to allow
>>>>> users to blank that setting and allow mythfrontend to listen 
>>>>> everywhere,
>>>>> then this is a fine example of why not including applications is a
>>>>> terrible design choice.  I realize it is designed to take up a 
>>>>> minimum
>>>>> of storage, but mythtv-setup is all of 360KB.
>>>>
>>>> So this living-room appliance needs settings made that cannot be
>>>> performed though it's usual interface? Someone has to access the
>>>> command line and provoke the machine into displaying mythtv-setup
>>>> in place of mythfrontend briefly to make the configuration change
>>>> and then provoke it into redisplaying mythfrontend? That doesn't
>>>> sound like an ideal design either. Or should minimyth provide a normal
>>>> desktop from which the user had to start mythfrontend each time
>>>> the machine is booted. Again not a great design.
>>>>
>>> Er, no. To access the backend setup parameters, provided that the slave
>>> backend is activated in the tftpboot config file, there's a menu option
>>> available once the front end has booted up. This allows you to stop the
>>> backend, run mythtv-setup and restart the backend.
>>
>> Oh ok, a neat feature, but then that means you have to run a possibly,
>> otherwise unnecessary slave backend to be able to set a frontend
>> setting. I wasn't intending to criticise mimimyth
>> with my comment. I was more trying to rebuff the "not including
>> apps is a terrible design choice" comment, suggesting that the need
>> for the app is more the problem.
>>
> I would rather suggest that this indicates that this particular 
> setting is in the wrong place.
>
> It's much like having to fire up the front end (on the master backend 
> that lives in a cupboard) in order to select a theme so that you can 
> then shut it down in order to set up the backend properly... the 
> default Terra theme is unusable (IMHO).

You simply have to run mythtv-setup, the setup program for MythTV, to 
set the appropriate setting.  Note that it's not called mythbackend-setup...

And, on a frontend-only machine, it should be easy to run mythtv-setup, 
since--by definition--a frontend has a GUI environment already 
configured.  It may even be easier to run mythtv-setup on a 
frontend-only system than on a backend because a) you don't have to stop 
the running backend on the system and b) you can run mythtv-setup while 
mythfrontend is running and c) backends may well be headless systems, 
which require some other approach to running the GUI mythtv-setup 
program, such as VNC or ssh -Y.

It sounds like the minimyth "menu option available once the front end 
has booted up [that] allows you to stop the backend, run mythtv-setup 
and restart the backend" is quite appropriate being displayed only on a 
system with a backend--since there's no backend to shut down and restart 
if it's not a backend system.  Now, perhaps it would be convenient if 
there's also an option to just run mythtv-setup on a frontend-only 
system, but I'd guess they're treading lightly there because some 
changes in mythtv-setup will require other backend processes on other 
hosts to be shut down, so it may actually do more harm than good to make 
it easy to access.

Mike