Database & Storeage Directory Housekeeper Setup Page

[harrycoin@…]

I have run into usability issues that cry out for a page in the mythtv-setup program that has an 'overall long-term housekeeping' function to include these specific abilities:

1. List all backends and frontends the database knows about, with the ability to delete everything to do with retired systems. Backends come and go, but their data is forever. Put in a new frontend or backend that happens to have the same name as an old one long forgotten or upgrade (with different guts entirely) and it all goes horribly wrong.

2. Offer the ability to delete all dtv scans, multiplex ids, channel ids and anything in the channel / video source database not actually specifically tied to currently listed video sources, input connections and configured video cards.

3. A button to automagically re-assign multiplex ids and channel id numbers so that there is no possible way new scans will create conflicts with existing data. Note Mediacom at least in Moline, Ill has channel numbers reported by VCT including 1000, so the 'add the channel number to the source-id*1000' thing needs another look.

4. A button to bulk purge all storage group .png and recreate them based on what's currently in the storage groups-- across backends. A warning flag and delete option on video files with a file size too short to creditably contain the indicated viewing time.

5. A button to list all files in any Myth controlled directory without known current connection in the database (to include video files whose filesize is unreasonable given the assumed video length). A button to list all entries in the database pointing at files that don't exist/can't be accessed that only works if all current storage groups and other directories are accessible.

6. Notice that Schedules Direct has QAM maps for cable dtv, however mythtv doesn't comprehend that format in the channel scanner. Asking mythtv folks to embrace scte65scan (not part of any binary repository) and divine the user's local vct code in order to get something schedules direct can match to xml is, you know, asking a great deal given how many cable users are. Requiring folk to create a video source, somehow learn its source id number, feed that to scte65scan's sql output... ah.... these aren't the 'droids you're looking for. The housekeeping page should include a way to score the results of a physical scan of what's actually on the cable, giving the user a drop down box with the contents of various VCT code possibilities with endorsements for those actually in the schedules direct QAM map and another for whether it is the schedules-direct xml codes. Maybe this is more properly a feature for the input connection setup page.

7. A button that scans all the on-screen help messages in mythtv and determines whether they have a chance in hell of actually being displayable in the space of the text box allowed by the current theme, and if not reducing the size of the font or in the alternative suggesting to the user they pick another theme.

I hope folk understand this as being intended to be helpful, people who don't basically like all this alot don't bother to mention problems.

[robertm]

Some of these are valid and interesting ideas, but unless they're coupled with a patch, there's not much we can do to help here. We all have lists as long as our arms of things we're trying to get done. If you'd like to provide patches for some of these things on their own tickets, we'd be happy to review them. We don't track feature requests in the bug tracker, however, so unless you're submitting a patch for one of these we need to close this ticket.