jmri roster file transfer ?

[BIG JERR]

hey all, its been awhile since I posted this question and many improvements to pr3 and newer windows versions and JMRI link up have been made ,YES . So after a year of inactivity I was able to upgrade my pr3 with a download and shazam ! working flawless on my win -7 desk top and also loaded up on a win 7 laptop with same results (for the layout)...

  Now back to my question, has any found a way to transfer through a network home group or whatever,  the roster and settings from one computer (the desk top) to  another (laptop) ?? 

 the JMRI program has a "roster file export & file import" option, but as of yet cant get it to work NOW strangely enough I can do  a "single locos settings" to transfer BUT not the whole roster   , it would be the icing on the cake if I could get the roster info on both computers and even better if changes made on one comp. would update to the other comp. . I guess I could just use the laptop for ALL but then its nice to have a back-up unit ...

   Jerr

[rrinker]

 You just have to copy the files from one system to another. There's an item on the JMRI web site on how to do this. The location of the files, at least on Windows, depends on the version of Windows each machine is, but the true difference really is just the base part of the location - on XP it's C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\....  and on Vista and newer it's C:\users\<username>\...

 If you ahev multuiple computers you want to use, you can get oen fo the free cloud storage acocunts liek Dropbox and put the files there, and set the preferences on each copy of JMRI to access the Dropbox folder, thus multiple computers can have the same roster information. Iwouldn;t recommend using multipel computers at the same time, I don;t think JMRI is set up for multi-user access to the roster files.

 

                --Randy

[BIG JERR]

THANKS RANDY , Im getting closer to my goal and have found a lot of interesting things about JMRI on the site and in the PDF manuel I downloaded to my computors . I well play more LATER ... THANKS   Jerr   ps; put Icons on my roster intries and broke the roster into sub rosters by roadname , nice since I have three roads

[gregc]

PCs can cross-mount the file systems from one PC onto another.   (right-click computer and select map network drive.)  if you can specify the location of the roster file in JMRI, this allows JMRI on both PC to see the same file.

[BIG JERR]

Greg ,that sounds good, though Im not a computor guy " alot of buttons and such" I have got the " map network drive " up but dont see a" C " in choices where the jmri files are supose to be. kinda lost .. can any expand on this ?    jerr

[gregc]

BIG JERR

Greg ,that sounds good, though Im not a computor guy " alot of buttons and such" I have got the " map network drive " up but dont see a" C " in choices where the jmri files are supose to be. kinda lost .. can any expand on this ?

i know this is tricky and i'm not sure about some things, but this is a very conventional way of sharing info between computers.   Maybe others can chime in

the idea is to make a subset of files on one machine accessible on the other.

• the files on the PC you want to share must be "sharable"
• you need the IP address of the PC on your home network
• you map the PC and "share name" onto the PC you want to share them to

for  example, my wife uses a descktop and I use a laptop and I want to share c:/Public directory on her desktop to other PCs in the house.  

1) On her desktop, through the "My Computer" icon, I (as administrator login on the PC) opened a window to the file/directories on her c: drive.  I right-clicked the /Public directory, and selected the sharing option and made it sharable over the network

2) I determined the desktop IP as 192.168.1.4.   (the 192.168 addresses are standard IPs for local devices such as your wifi hub).   from a dos window, you can run "ipconfig" or probably determine the IP address through your wifi hub (from your browser try going to 192.168.1.1)

3) on my laptop I right-clicked "Computer", selected "map network dirve", entered "\\192.168.1.4\Public" and picked an unused drive letter, I picked P:.

at this point on my laptop, I can open "Computer", see an entry for P: and can select it.  I can see the files under /Public on my wife's desktop

I would tell JMRI to use a roster file under the P: directory.

 

the problem with what i've described is that the locally assigned IP address (192.168.1.4) will change the next time we turn on the computers, the last number may change.   I believe there's a way of doing this that can avoid this problem, a static assignment or by computer name.  I'm sure someone on the forum would know how.