[WelshPaul]

Hi All,

I've set up MYSQL on my NAS to sync my netbook and ATV2 and all seems to have gone well and is working nicely. Could I ask those of you who use this kind of set up:

1. Do you retain the old databases and thumbnail folders on your ATV2 and PC/MAC in case there is a failure of the MYSQL at some future time?
2. If there is a corruption in the future for whatever reason is it possible just to delete the bits added to advancedsettings.xml, revert the sources and do a library update on the individual machines, assuming we're still using v12?
3. If there's no point retaining the files on individual machines, do you just delete the thumbs folder and the video and music databases or there other redundancies in the userdata folder it would be wise to remove?

By the way I'm still testing v12.2 on the ATV2, though following people's advice to stick to using confluence. I haven't encountered any crashing instances yet.

Thanks

[TechLife]

Hi All,

I've set up MYSQL on my NAS to sync my netbook and ATV2 and all seems to have gone well and is working nicely. Could I ask those of you who use this kind of set up:

1. Do you retain the old databases and thumbnail folders on your ATV2 and PC/MAC in case there is a failure of the MYSQL at some future time?
2. If there is a corruption in the future for whatever reason is it possible just to delete the bits added to advancedsettings.xml, revert the sources and do a library update on the individual machines, assuming we're still using v12?
3. If there's no point retaining the files on individual machines, do you just delete the thumbs folder and the video and music databases or there other redundancies in the userdata folder it would be wise to remove?

By the way I'm still testing v12.2 on the ATV2, though following people's advice to stick to using confluence. I haven't encountered any crashing instances yet.

Thanks

I'm no expert, but I can tell you how I have been handling this for the last several years:

1. I have never deleted them, but I have never tried to revert back either. To the best of my knowledge, those aren't updated once you switch to SQL so they really serve no purpose. I have a script that runs on my Linux server that backs up the SQL tables each day. I have had issues where my HTPC doesn't properly connect to the shares on the server and because I have "CleanOnUpdate" set, so it wipes the database contents. When that happens (and it's very rare) I just restore the backup and I'm back in business.

2. Yes

3. Again, I have never done anything with them so I don't know. I do know in Frodo, the new concept is to have the thumbs copied to the local machines. I'm old school and have a substantial thumbs folder so I left it mapped to the central thumbs folder on the server.

Again, I'm no expert so there it is for what it's worth. Maybe someone else can shed a little more light but this has always been (and continues to be in Frodo) bulletproof for me. =)

[WelshPaul]

Thanks TechLife, great advice on backing up. I was thinking that if I deleted thumbs on my ATV2 it would free up enough space to load my picture library which would then start slideshows without a lot of spinning scanning logos. But it sounds like what you gain on one you may lose on the other. I'll give it a few weeks and see how it goes.

[TechLife]

I don't know if it will work on your NAS, but when I get home later I will try to find that script I used for automated SQL backup on my server if you want to play around with it.

I don't see any reason why you can't delete the thumbs on the ATV as long as you have the thumbs folder remapped in your advancedsettings.xml which would free up that space.

I am using ATV1's but to alleviate the delay on the thumbs, fanart and photo screensaver, I installed smbfs and created an entry in fstab on the ATV to automatically mount the remote folder that contains the aforementioned. Works pretty well for me. So in advancedsettings instead of having thumbs point to //server/thumbs/ it points to /mnt/xbmc_shared/thumbs and the screensaver points to /mnt/xbmc_shared/pictures. It's the same thing and still a little sluggish at times, but it seems to have shortened the delay enough to make it worth it. I know with the drives in those, I could copy it all over and use a cron job to sync them, but I'm just too lazy.

[TechLife]

I used AutoMySQLBackup to manage my backups on the server. Not 100% sure this will work for you on a NAS but if it can run MySQL, it should.

If not, I would think this method certainly should. It won't do the sorting and management the way AutoMySQLBackup will, but it'll certainly work.

[WelshPaul]

Thanks very much for the link Techlife. I tried with AutoMySqlbackup but it all looked a rather complicated editing job for my level of Unix (in)competence, and I was starting to get a bit worried about my NAS blowing up. So I found a script that makes use of the Synology's built in scheduler which seems to be working, and I think does pretty much the same thing. Hope I never have to try and restore a dump file though.

http://www.beatificabytes.be/wordpress/s...-synology/

Appreciate your guidance and assistance.

Paul

[Milhouse]

1. No, I don't keep anything on the clients other than Thumbnails folder.

2. If I wanted to switch back to independent clients I'd just remove the MySQL elements from the advancedsettings, delete the Thumbnails folder, reboot and then re-scrape the library on each client.

3. You don't delete the Thumbnails folder on each client, unless you're using pathsubstitiion but this (path sub) is no longer recommended so you should keep the Thumbnails folder and let it be populated (cached) by the client. You can certainly delete the video and music databases from each client, though.

[WelshPaul]

Thanks Milhouse, what the Wiki about moving from Eden to Frodo says is:
"You can still use path substitution if you want to! Path subs are still useful for devices with low memory, like the Apple TV2 and various devices using small USB drives or SSDs. If you still want to use path subs then skip this entire "Thumbnails" section. Loading the library will be slowing with path subs, but this might be a reasonable trade-off for your situation."
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW...bstitution

Not sure if that guidance has been subsequently updated, but it doesn't seem to be creating a big loading delay for me at least. I'll see if it continues to run well for a couple of weeks. If so I think I'll try my photo collection on the ATV, if not I'll have a dabble with TechLife's smbfs and fstab solution (though at the moment that sounds a whole other language).

Cheers

[TechLife]

That is exactly why I still use substitution. My thumbs folder is 30GB alone.



If you want some help with the solution I described, please let me know. It's overwhelming at first if you aren't a linux guy. I promise, it's actually pretty easy and will be happy to write up a step-by-step guide.

[WelshPaul]

Just an update if anyone is interested. So, I've been really happy with the way MySQL has been running, couple of months and no crashes, and thumbs have been great on both machines running from the shared folder on my Syno NAS. Finally got around to deleting the thumbs folder from my ATV2 to free up space and copied over my wallpaper folders. As hoped my picture slideshows now start with no spinning 'wait till it loads' symbols. So, so, happy that I'm back to being able to start music playlist and within a couple of remote presses have my slideshow running. Thanks guys for your advice.

[TechLife]

Glad to see you got it all worked out