[mythtv-users] Copy frontend settings to new frontend keeping both

[Michael T. Dean]

On 10/24/2015 04:47 PM, Mike Rice wrote:
> Seems like this should be easy but I don't know how to do it.  I 
> currently have a frontend (hostname=nucfrontend) setup exactly how I 
> want it.  I bought another machine that I want to put upstairs.  It is 
> almost exactly the same so I just want to copy the settings from 
> nucfrontend to the new box (nuci3frontend).
>
> I can do this:
>
> mythconverg_restore.pl <http://mythconverg_restore.pl> 
> --change_hostname --old_hostname="XXXX" --new_hostname="YYYY"
>
> but it seems to remove the settings for old_hostname (tried it with a 
> really old hostname I had in there).  I need to keep both.

Right, that is to change the host name, not to "copy a host 
configuration", so to speak.

>
> I tried the custom-identifier route but I couldn't get that to work.  
> I need a different AudioOutputDevice on each. Changing on one frontend 
> breaks the other.
>
> Any ideas?

There's no way to do this.  Why?  Because a) there's no definition of 
"frontend settings," and b) in theory, you should be using almost all 
default settings and only modifying a few settings values to get the 
behavior you desire, so it should be easy to change a few settings after 
creating a new frontend--and failing to do so will have no negative 
effects other than not performing the behavior you expect (which then 
becomes your notification that you need to change that setting to 
something other than the default).

So, what do I mean by a)?  Well, "frontend settings" involves a lot of 
things, from what theme to use or what graphics drawing approach to use 
(among many others), through to key bindings and jump points, to plugin 
settings.  Some of the specific items within these categories make sense 
as customizations that can be copied from host to host, but some are 
actually host specific.  As far as storage goes, those settings are all 
commingled with settings for other programs, including mythbackend and 
even--in some cases--third-party applications or plugins, with no way to 
distinguish them.  And, blindly copying values that are appropriate for 
one host to be used by another can actually make that other/new host 
non-functional; whereas starting a frontend on a 
never-used-for-a-frontend system will create a system will 
all-default/all-known-to-work-on-any-system configuration, that can then 
be tweaked over time to get the desired behavior.

For what it's worth, we plan to eventually have some functionality for 
making it easier to copy specific customizations to other systems (like 
key bindings themes and "distro-configuration overrides" (or, for lack 
of a better name, "settings themes)), but don't have them, yet.

Mike