Can I make all clients identical?

[bikesquid]

Is there an easy way to setup all the clients (both pc and hd300's) to have the identical sage/gemstone setup with just a simple copy/paste of a config file or something simple like that? If I make changes I'll do it to a "master" setup and ideally just redo the cut/paste operation for the rest of the clients.

[jusjoken]

Sure... on the "master" you go to the Options (from the main menu), select Utility, then select Export. Select the all Export item.

Then on each client (extender or PC client) do the same but select Import and select the same file you exported above.

Note: this only exports/imports Gemstone settings so if you manually customize Sage settings those will not be exported/imported.

k

[bikesquid]

That's what I thought. I must be doing it wrong, on the client as soon as I select the file to import I get a "loading" and it just sits there.... forever. Any ideas?

[wayner]

Another idea similar to this would be to allow allow clients to use one global master setting so that when you change something it immediately propogates to all clients. That way you don't have to manually import on every client. Either that or have one master settings file that is loaded up when you start the extender.

[jusjoken]

Originally Posted by wayner

Another idea similar to this would be to allow allow clients to use one global master setting so that when you change something it immediately propogates to all clients. That way you don't have to manually import on every client. Either that or have one master settings file that is loaded up when you start the extender.

You can do that for the menu settings if you have a custom menu you want on all clients by setting that in the menu manager options but we never did it for all other settings.


k

[wayner]

Originally Posted by jusjoken

You can do that for the menu settings if you have a custom menu you want on all clients by setting that in the menu manager options but we never did it for all other settings.

I took a look in the Menu Manager but I didn't see where you would do this - how do you do it exactly?

[jusjoken]

To set a Menu location override....

- Options
- Menu Manager
- Options
- Advanced Options
- Menu Location - change to Override
- Set the menu file to a reachable location for all clients

You basically pick a folder and if a menus.properties file already exists it will load that file and use it. If it does not exist then it will save the current menu properties to that location and use it from then on.

Set the menu location back to "by Client" if you don't like the results.

k

[wayner]

I tried that and it switched me back to an older menu. How do I reset the master menus file? Can I just delete the menus.properties files from the Gemstone folder?

edit - In other words once I am happy with a menus setup how do I save that as the master? It seems that whenever I try to set to the override it throws me back into an old menu that I have since changed.

edit2 - I was finally able to get what I wanted by copying a "good" client properties file that I had exported earlier to menu.properties.

[wayner]

But to continue on with this - when I make a change in my menus how do I save it back to the server? Or is it saved automatically? And when is this reflected in other extenders using the same file?

Can I copy a .properties file from Gemstone that contains all properties to another server?

[jusjoken]

The export feature in the utilities menu exports all gemstone properties and can be imported to another server or other clients.

k

[wayner]

Ok that is great it will make it faster to configure my backup server. I guess the one caveat is that the paths have to be valid for the second server if you are using Folder Filters, which I am.

But once I switch to one central menu location and I make changes on a client how do I update this master menu file so that it has these latest changes?

If I want to just propagate this stuff myself can I just shut down sage and copy the one master properties file in SageTV\SageTV\STVs\Gemstone\menus onto all of the others? What happens if I just nuke the all of the .properties files other than the one that is on the server - what will it use for defaults for the others? Will it copy the one existing one or will it start with the basic defaults?

p.s. Sorry to be a nag, I do appreciate the work that you guys have done as this does seem to be a fair bit of an improvement on Diamond.

[jusjoken]

Well...in theory it's all done automagically....but if you are asking then perhaps it's not working as intended

The design is that if any client made a change then the single shared menu.properties file changes and the others will then use it....but of course they don't load the menu properties constantly so the other clients would need to be told to load the change....a client restart would do it for sure (I think).

You would need to test it out to see what action other than a restart on a client would load the menu file again....and let me know if a restart does not load it...then I would need to research the code (might not happen soon though).

k