[mythtv-users] modernizing mythtv - and now OT

[Stephen Worthington]

On Tue, 13 May 2014 03:08:18 -0400, you wrote:

>>>> To come back to a more fundamental issue. No server/backend
>>>> application should depend on a graphical environment other then WEB.
>>>> Running X for those is a wast of resources. That is one of the main
>>>> reasons I find Windows unsuited for server applications. On my server
>>>> running mythbackend among others I have only the most basic graphical
>>>> card present, so I can if needed watch the boot process and implement
>>>> new kernels. The only reason X is even installed is Mythsetup, which I
>>>> only start at need. The rest I manage by ssh or more and more the web.
>>>> Originally a lot of people were running both back and frontend on the
>>>> same machine, but nowadays more and more people are splitting this up.
>>>> So I see mythsetup as an archaic inheritance of old times, that
>>>> should be replaced by a more modern web interface.
>>>
>>> I have completely headless BE, I upgrade the kernels and run setup
>>> remotely no problem. No X installed.
>>
>> What resources are wasted? Do you understand how unix systems, swap and LRU (least recently used) work?
>> The only waste is some disk space, and at the price of disks, some $0.02 for once-upon-a-time great convenience.
>> You may do server-without-X for all manor of reasons, as you will, but don’t sprout waste-of-resources as the justification!
>
>I agree that mythtv-setup needs to go away, but not because of
>"resource usage".  I would like to see it replaced with a web, or even
>ncurses, based interface because it would greatly simplify management.
> While I know there are ways to run mythtv-setup remotely, it's not
>always convenient.
>
>Additionally, mythtv-setup kills the backend whenever you run it,
>however many of the settings that I actually tweak in there beyond
>initial setup shouldn't care if the backend is running or not.  For
>example transcoding/job options, channel icons/numbers/names/etc, and
>many other things.  There is no reason that an interface couldn't be
>developed that would queue all of the changes, perhaps by cloning the
>necessary tables, and when your done making changes the settings get
>applied all at once (restarting the BE only if necessary).
>
>But in all honesty... mythtv could stay exactly as it is and I
>wouldn't give it up until I had no choice.  We can all see room for
>improvement, but if you compare it to the next best thing out
>there.... its pretty easy to overlook any flaws.

You can run mythtv-setup without shutting down mythbackend if you want
to take the risk.  I have done it many times to just update something
in the channel table.  In Mythbuntu, the mythtv-setup executable is a
script that shuts down and restarts mythbackend.  It runs
mythtv-setup.real.  If you directly run mythtv-setup.real, you will be
told if mythbackend is running, but you can tell it to go ahead and
bring up the main menu anyway.