[mythtv-users] modernizing mythtv - and now OT

[Michael T. Dean]

On 05/13/2014 03:08 AM, Joseph Fry 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,

No, your distro's scripts do.

> 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.

Yes, this is why the vast majority of these used to be in mythfrontend's 
setup area until someone got the mistaken idea that mythtv-setup is 
actually "mythbackend-setup" and all settings related to mythbackend 
needed to be in mythtv-setup.

>    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.

Yeah, unfortunately seeing the room for improvement (or the paths to 
improvement) isn't the problem--finding the time to develop and test is 
the big challenge.

Mike