Moving files, including metadata, to new server

[wayner]

I hope to build a new server soon for V9. I want to move over all of my existing media files.

I have lots of imported video where I have had to manually fix metadata and/or remap the Fanart so that I get DVD posters in English rather than Russian (or whatever).

As long as my folders have .properties files then will BMT and/or Sage itself import all of the metadata correctly?

Should I move over the Fanart folders or should I let BMT redownload all of the Fanart files?

Will it also use the correct Fanart files for movie posters, etc - essentially mirroring what is in my current install rather than the defaults?

Is there anything else I should do to facilitate the move?

[Monedeath]

If you copy over the wiz.bin and retain the .properties files as well(for the individual media files, not the server's properties files), the Metadata should transition fine. The fanart handling is plugin dependant among other things.

[wayner]

Can you copy over the wiz.bin if the paths are different? Current paths are of the form //server1/Movies, //server1/videos. All that will change is likely the servername but will that hose the associatins in wiz.bin?

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by wayner

Can you copy over the wiz.bin if the paths are different? Current paths are of the form //server1/Movies, //server1/videos. All that will change is likely the servername but will that hose the associatins in wiz.bin?

Depends on if it can access those file paths. You may end up having to flip some flags in the properties file for the server itself before all is said a done depending on how you remove the old directories(you can create situations where Sage thinks a directory is offline and retains the data for everything in it, but there are ways to deal with that), but it can be done.

IIRC, This post is still relevant as the approaches outlined would still work, although easier options may exist in some cases now.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...6&postcount=23

[Monedeath]

I directly linked to the wrong faq post for the newer versions of Sage, although that link did in turn link to faq for the newer versions. To help people skip that step here is the direct link to the FAQ for newer(v7+) versions of sage, before plugins factor into things.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30697

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by Monedeath

If you copy over the wiz.bin and retain the .properties files as well, the Metadata should transition fine. The fanart handling is plugin dependant among other things.

Just copy the wiz.bin. The .properties files will have settings specific to the server. When you fire up the new server Sage will automatically update the file paths of the videos.

[wayner]

The only thing that will have changed for file libraries is the server name so that should simplify things somewhat.

For example, my movie library will move from:

\\server1\Movies to \\server2\Movies

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by wayner

The only thing that will have changed for file libraries is the server name so that should simplify things somewhat.

For example, my movie library will move from:

\\server1\Movies to \\server2\Movies

A lot of people do not recommend moving the .properties files. However, I have done it successfully before. The catch is that you need to go through them with a text editor and fix any paths that changed (depending on what plugins you have installed, there may be a lot of paths scattered around the properties file that need to be corrected).

Some would argue that it is safer to just let Sage create a new properties file and set things up from scratch. An added benefit is that starting fresh gets rid of a lot of "cruft" that may have built up over years of using Sage (especially if you have experimented with adding and removing lots of various plugins, as their properties tend to get left behind).

YMMV.

[wayner]

By .properties file do you mean the ones created for each media file? My default will be to move them over as I have down a fair bit of customization through the years that I would lose without this.

But I will be running both systems in parallel for a while so I can try it out and always reinstall and start over if it doesn't work so well.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by wayner

By .properties file do you mean the ones created for each media file? My default will be to move them over as I have down a fair bit of customization through the years that I would lose without this.

But I will be running both systems in parallel for a while so I can try it out and always reinstall and start over if it doesn't work so well.

No, i mean Sage.properties and the properties files for clients and extenders.

[wayner]

It would actually be good if I could move over the properties files for the extenders as figuring out how I installed Gemstone and customized the menus may take a while. I wonder if I could just do a Gemstone export from V7 and import it into V9?

[jusjoken]

Originally Posted by wayner

It would actually be good if I could move over the properties files for the extenders as figuring out how I installed Gemstone and customized the menus may take a while. I wonder if I could just do a Gemstone export from V7 and import it into V9?

That would be the approach i would suggest as the gemstone export should handle all gemstone specific settings.

k

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by wayner

By .properties file do you mean the ones created for each media file? My default will be to move them over as I have down a fair bit of customization through the years that I would lose without this.

But I will be running both systems in parallel for a while so I can try it out and always reinstall and start over if it doesn't work so well.

I meant the ones for the individual recordings and imports, as those are the only ones with metadata. The properties files in the SageTV directory should be created new for reasons already covered. (They're settings for the server, not metadata)