[mythtv-users] mythmerge - DB merge for recordings.

[Stephen Boddy]

Hi all,

What?: utility to merge the needed tables from multiple DB's for
recordings.

Why?: My real backend is in one location, and I tend to be elsewhere for
long periods. This allows me to go home, backup the DB and copy the
recordings folder to an external drive, then merge them into my "road"
system.

How?: A bash script for doing various exports and imports, and a python
program for ensuring data doesn't conflict.

DefCon?: 1!!! This is still rough around the edges so experienced folk
only. If you can't program bash and python you probably don't want to
use this for now. In the event there is an issue, you will be lost
otherwise.

How well does it work?: Well, I merged about 7 db's stretching back to
2005 which finished with a 1GB mythconverg folder. Roughly the same
number of recording folders covering about 2.5TB of recordings. I now
have a nice, sane, db for a single fake backend (my laptop) consisting
of ~1700 recordings. It worked for me, and I expect it will work in the
future. YMMV

Anything else?: There is also a python program which will help you clean
up recordings. It's a bit like the perl find_orphans, but interactive,
and tries to be a bit smarter, including creating new entries from
scratch. I had normal orphans, orphans that were a result of an aborted
myth.rename.pl, recordings where I subsequently lost the system disk
with the db on it, and so on. All fixed!

Anyone interested? Or is this so niche that I should be the only one to
eat this brand of dogfood?

Steve