Why... oh why...

[pablolie]

...So I bring a Squeeze Radio home. I connect it to my network. I works very nicely. Great product.

But surprise. My Menu settings for *all* other players in my household have been overwritten. AGAIN. Now I have to manually reconfigure every player's Menu settings, AGAIN.

Logitech: you MUST provide a tool to save existing settings. You MUST. The whole back up your conf file crap is utterly unnerving, and useless. You must stop punishing us users that have bought quite a few of your players. It is a LOT of work to reconfigure them when mistakes like this are made in software.

And the fact that the Radio comes with some Menu settings that include all the stuff I do *NOT* want on my players' main menu should never lead to it overwriting previously defined Menu settings on other players. Agh.

[mherger]

Why... oh why...

> Logitech: you MUST provide a tool to save existing settings. You MUST.

Windows does. OSX does. Linux has tons of them. Why should we add another backup solution? It's one folder (see Settings/Information) to back up.

> The whole back up your conf file crap is utterly unnerving, and useless.

What is not working for you? Our backup solution you want wouldn't do much more than give you a copy of those files. What else would you want?

FWIW: This is working perfectly fine for me. And believe me: with all the testing I do I often restore those files more than once a day. No problem at all.

--

Michael

[erland]

...So I bring a Squeeze Radio home. I connect it to my network. I works very nicely. Great product.

But surprise. My Menu settings for *all* other players in my household have been overwritten. AGAIN. Now I have to manually reconfigure every player's Menu settings, AGAIN.

What kind of settings are we talking about ? I thought the menu settings was stored locally on the Radio.

Do you use Squeezebox Server or MySqueezebox.com ?

Did you just add the Radio to your network without re-installing Squeezebox Server and all the other player menus suddenly looked differently ?

Or did you reinstall Squeezebox Server so this caused to the problem ?

I've seen a third party SettingsManager plugin, I wonder if that's usable for this scenario (sounds promising based on its description) ?

[pablolie]

This i spurely SBS stuff. The Menu settings of all boxes were overwritten when the Radio came in.

As to the backup solution - the current form would not work for this. Every time I default to my old config file I'd have to add the Radio again - endless loop as it resets the other boxes' menus again.

The backup option I am talking about is a backup .bin file for every squeezebox that can be restored. Every wireless device has one. Copying around system files is *not* a stable backup solution, and in this case does not work at all.

[pippin]

Re: Why... oh why...

New flavor: I believe he talks Apps and those are ALWAYS stored on MySB.
No way to backup there.

@Michael: sorry, but that's nonsense. Please don't expect users to do stuff in installation directories. Especially true on OSX where the prefs are in a location actually being hidden from the user by the system.

[mherger]

Why... oh why...

> The backup option I am talking about is a backup .bin file for every
> squeezebox that can be restored. Every wireless device has one. Copying

Unpack those .bin files and you'd be surprised to find a bunch of text files...

> around system files is *not* a stable backup solution, and in this case
> does not work at all.

Really, a .bin file of whatever format couldn't contain other information than is stored in the prefs file. The form of transport doesn't change the data.

--

Michael

[Mnyb]

Setting manager is it maintained ? it can save and copy player settings for a each player ?

FYI the settings is not in the device itself the old players menu settings is all in server, the only thing in the player is the network setup.

Squeezeplay based players have some local autonomy over their menu's.

Otherwise ip3k players like SB3 is all in server, otherwise pablolies reasoning hold here to the conf file is for all players is it not ?
restore that and the new player goes away, endless loop.

But the real questions is why all menu settings for the other players is overwritten ??

Is it mysqueezebox.com that does this ?

What version of squeezeboxserver are we using here.
On what OS.

If this can be reproduced then it's a bug = file bug report

I have added players on multiple occasions never seen this ?

[pablolie]

Adding a Radio did this.

Now my Duet is in some weird loop too. Agh. It now no longer wants to connect to the library it has always been connected too. When I try to go into the SBS My Music, the only option is "Switch Library". I am looking into this when I wanted to listen to new age music to go to sleep. Agh again.

[mherger]

Why... oh why...

> @Michael: sorry, but that's nonsense. Please don't expect users to do

I do. Everybody should care about backing up his data. You won't blame MS for lack of a backup feature in Word if you lose a document, do you?

> stuff in installation directories. Especially true on OSX where the
> prefs are in a location actually being hidden from the user by the
> system.

Huh? Hidden in what way? It's in my Library folder as all the other prefs.

--

Michael

[pablolie]

> @Michael: sorry, but that's nonsense. Please don't expect users to do

I do. Everybody should care about backing up his data. You won't blame MS for lack of a backup feature in Word if you lose a document, do you?

> stuff in installation directories. Especially true on OSX where the
> prefs are in a location actually being hidden from the user by the
> system.

Huh? Hidden in what way? It's in my Library folder as all the other prefs.

--

Michael

The OS hides system files. You have to unhide them. You have to do something the OS desginers want to prevent most users from doing. In Linux you have to get root privileges to mess around with the var/lib folder, ok? But guess what: even that does not help in this case.

And even that does not help you if the configuration file you saved is worthless. MY configuration file contains the data for *all* my boxes meshed into one. Say I add a radio and it screws them all up. Oh I restore the old file. Now I have to add the radio again. Oh how fun, it screws up all the other boxes again. Do you see the fundamental issue here, hello?

A better and more granular way is required. Any way to restore settings to an individual box from a saved configuration that is easy to navigate and operates at some level of abstraction. Honestly, it doesn't make any sense to (a) not want to understand and (b) claim the current system of dealing with a *proprietary* system file that is hidden and has no guarantee whatsoever of forward compatibility is the way to stay...

I have been asking for a settings backup feature for ages, and every time the "SBS was designed by a Deity and is infallible"stalwarts claim that backing up the proprietary system file like now is perfectly sufficient. It is patently not.

[DaveWr]

Why oh why?

Well we know, the Squeeze experience is not for ordinary consumers, it is primarily for IT / ex IT / want to be IT staff.

Designed by computer professionals for computer g***s.

Dave

[pippin]

> @Michael: sorry, but that's nonsense. Please don't expect users to do

I do. Everybody should care about backing up his data. You won't blame MS for lack of a backup feature in Word if you lose a document, do you?

This is not a document. It's not created by the user but part of the installation files. It sits within the installation path

> stuff in installation directories. Especially true on OSX where the
> prefs are in a location actually being hidden from the user by the
> system.

Huh? Hidden in what way? It's in my Library folder as all the other prefs.

OK, I thought it was still in the preference pane as it did before.

But seriously. You can't expect users to do backups - and especially restores! - of files in Library/Application Support/Squeezebox Server
How often do you restore MS Word installation files? I don't.

I also don't persistently store configuration files of Word, but I can have a template where I store some of my information to be reused.

I repeatedly use all my config data of SB because of some update stuff going wrong and I personally have pretty much given up on custom configs due to that.
Aso - and I'm a programmer - the structure of the .prefs file is beyond me so whenever I run into some trouble with that file I'm in for a hard time on keeping info. The last time I needed this it was pure luck that I found the right entry to delete. Changes beyond deleting entries are NOT what I'm doing to that file.

But again: I don't believe this is about SBS, I believe this is about MySB!

[mherger]

Why... oh why...

> But seriously. You can't expect users to do backups - and especially
> restores!

Oh, isn't this thread about users asking for a backup feature? :-P

I better shut up now...

--

Michael

[DaveWr]

This is a thread about people updating their Squeeze stuff and not losing their previous hard work configuring the system.....

Yes, we Mac users can usually restore the status quo (from a backup), not much help if we wanted a software upgrade.

Dave

[Labarum]

The uses of a product like Squeezebox should not be expected to dig deep into the operating system files to make a backup of preferences.

Many programmes have menu options to export and import prefs.

Let's have it for Squeeze products.