Windows Dharma to Eden - Upgrade steps

Exactly the information I was looking for.

So summing it all up, what I understand is the following assuming that I need an easy and effortless way to revert back to Dharma in case the 'Eden' comes up with any unwanted surprises.

1. Back up (copy the userdata folder) and also take an export of the video library on another drive.

2. Install Eden over the already installed Dharma but Is it recommended to have two copies of XBMC running in parallel (as this is what I assume reading the thread, that Dharma and Eden can co-exist peacefully). Does it give any benefits or..

3. Uninstall Dharma and install Eden on a fresh clean system and then import the library exported earlier from Dharma. This will update/upgrade the library in due course during the import i suppose. Would also be a clean way to test eden functionality without any doubt of any conflicting settings from Dharma.

Any guidance or further addition to a safe upgrade passage would be appreciated. Also would be any recommendation to know that is it really worth upgrading to Eden for a normal viewer like myself, who has all the media (mostly 720p MKV files) stored on a NAS drive with an updated library, and I only mainly use it for regular joe's media streaming (not for any of the latest cutting edge audio/video standards/products).

Thanks.

1. Your backup of the userdata folder contains your database files. No need for an export, unless you are super cautious.
2. It is not recommend running both Dharma and Eden in parallel, unless you are running both in portable mode. Otherwise some of the files in your userdata folder may not work with each version.
3. Installing Eden on a clean machine will mean you have no libraries as of yet. So importing your library from an earlier export will create that for you.

Whether you upgrade or not is really a personal choice. Even though I may be a team member, I consider myself an average Joe user and I would not have hesitated to upgrade to Eden.

(2012-05-09 21:38)kricker Wrote:  So importing your library from an earlier export will create that for you.

I assume by this we are on the same point that the earlier export would be from an earlier version of XBMC (Dharma), and it is able to imported giltchless in the newer version so aptly called Eden.

Thanks.

Yes, it should be able to import just fine. You may need to refresh the movies in the database to fill in content that was not available in an earlier version of the database. Such as "sets" which is now supported out of the box in Eden, but was not in Dharma. I'm not sure what the best process for that would be.

(2012-05-10 18:47)kricker Wrote:  Yes, it should be able to import just fine. You may need to refresh the movies in the database to fill in content that was not available in an earlier version of the database. Such as "sets" which is now supported out of the box in Eden, but was not in Dharma. I'm not sure what the best process for that would be.

Before actually hitting the button just wanted to know the last few queries ;

I am planning to export the database from Dharma, to either single or separate files, and then uninstall Dharma completely. Then do a clean installation on Eden. Please guide for the following

1. If I export from Dharma v.10 to a single file, then would it also export the Movie Poster/Thumb and Fanart in that single file too. If not, then if this single file is imported in Eden v.11 then how would the movie thumb and fanart would be updated.

2. If I export from Dharma v.10 to a separate files, then supposedly it exports the movie thumb and fanart file to the movie folder. How can this separate export to multiple folders, be imported in Eden v.11 and would it read movie thumb and fanart from the folder (not to be scraped again from internet).

3. In case of following method 1 or 2, does it also keep the track or flag of watched movies intact, to be correctly imported in Eden

4. Do I have to keep the movie sources as the same in the Eden installation as they were in the Dharma installation. For example on my setup on Windows 7 -32 bit, there are two SAMBA network shares from a NAS mapped as local network drives with drive letters W and X. What I assume is that this relative or absolute path X or W :\Movies\English\Movie Name\Movie File.xxx is also exported in the database. These two shares are then added to a single XBMC source called "Movies Collection" which is used to scrape and locate movies.

So if after installing Eden, i change the mapped drive letters or reassign new letters, then would the whole database be inconsistent ? Is there any way to fix it or it should be avoided pricipally to keep the database import intact.

Any other precautions of migrating the database from v10 to v11, please mention.

Thanks a lot.

Bump...

1. I haven't done it, but I think no. It is just the text info in the DB, not including watched status I believe.

2. If you have local info available, XBMC will default to using the local info and not scrape from the web. Just make sure each movie is in its own folder within the base movie folder.

3. As stated in 1, I believe not unfortunately.

4. Do a single file export and look at it's contents. I think with that you have to keep the sources the same. With the multiple file export it should not matter. It creates the files in the folders with the movies. So they can be moved and re-imported without having to scrape them again.

(2012-08-12 17:28)kricker Wrote:  1. I haven't done it, but I think no. It is just the text info in the DB, not including watched status I believe.

2. If you have local info available, XBMC will default to using the local info and not scrape from the web. Just make sure each movie is in its own folder within the base movie folder.

3. As stated in 1, I believe not unfortunately.

4. Do a single file export and look at it's contents. I think with that you have to keep the sources the same. With the multiple file export it should not matter. It creates the files in the folders with the movies. So they can be moved and re-imported without having to scrape them again.

Thanks a lot for the information