How to Switch to Client/Server?

[SkierHiker]

I've been running SageTV on a single PC. Now I've installed that copy of SageTV onto a Windows Server, turned it into a SageTV Server, and want to convert the PC over to a SageTV Client. But I want to keep all my settings, custom STVi's, forms, etc.

If I purchase the Client software and install it on the PC, can I then copy my old SageTV folder on top of it and be all set up? Or do I need to do something special. Please don't tell me I have to re-configure SageTV from scratch.

Or maybe it could be as easy as just re-licensing my PC SageTV to a Client license and magically it will all work?

Thanks - Mark.

[toricred]

If you've got two server licenses, then you can run the same software on your new client with the -client command-line switch and it will look for a server on the network.

[GKusnick]

I would not recommend overwriting a working SageTV Client installation with a copy of your old SageTV Media Center folder. I'm not sure exactly what would happen, but probably nothing good.

As mentioned, you could run your existing Media Center installation as a client, but that would require a second Media Center license instead of a less expensive client license.

It would also be possible to copy over specific STVI files, JARs, and property settings from your old Media Center installation to a new, clean installation of SageTV Client, but that requires fairly detailed knowledge of which files and properties to copy. (Copying the entire properties file would probably not be a good idea.)

[toricred]

Actually if you are currently running Sage as a service then you will have a sageclient.properties file that will hold most of your settings. It won't include the actual imports, but it will point to the STV that will. The primary thing remaining will be to make sure you have the imports themselves installed in the directory when you move it to a client.

[SkierHiker]

Well, I thought I would experiement. I first backed up my SageTV folder, then installed SageTV Client on top of that folder. As expected SageTV Client started with the default settings. I could also start SageTV from the same folder. So I tried copying some of the UI settings in the SageTV Properties over to the Client Properties but that didn't help.

So what the heck, I copied everything over to the Client Properties and set the Client value to true. I then started SageTV Client and I got all my previous settings. So far, so good. It seems to work ok. I'll report back in a couple of days. Let me know what you think could go wrong and I'll check it out.

- UPDATE

Forget it. Install from scratch and take the time to update everything by hand. I learned my lesson both on my server and on the client. You'll save yourself hours of headache and family frustration.