Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[masterjoe]

Hi guys,

regarding my "crazy" home system I wonder what is possible regarding multiple instances of MC on the SAME machine?
I know that I can configure MC to allow launching multiple versions of MC.

My questions are the following (before experimenting with it):


(1) Is it possible to have TOTALLY different configurations (configuration file paths) for each of these MCs as if they were running on different machines?
Must these versions of MC be installed in different directories to achieve this? How independent can these instances really be?

(2) Can one instance be the library server and the other a pure client which connects to this server (as it is possible when they are on two different machines).
Or is it better to share the same library in a different way?

(3) Can MCWS be configured with a different port for each instance (but the same base address; e.g. localhost) so that I can communicate to each instance independently?

(4) Can any MC instance be "bound" to a specific monitor? Or must I manually ensure that the windows end up there?


Maybe I can reach my goal to have a multi-user system for video playback on one machine this way

[eddyshere]

creating and running MC in VM's on a single machine worked for me in the early days...

[mwillems]

creating and running MC in VM's on a single machine worked for me in the early days...

I'll second this; the only way to get the kind of separation of configuration (but-with-client-server relationships) you're looking for is with VMs.

You might be able to get some of what you want just running multiple instances, but 1) and 4), for example, will never work without VMs, although you might be able to achieve some of 1) by running different major versions of MC, but that's asking for trouble with item 2).

[RoderickGI]

(1) No, they will share registry settings. Even if installed in different directories. They won't be independent.

(2) No. If one instance is a Server, the setting that allows you to run multiple instances will be reset to not allow multiple instances, each time you run MC Server. Don't even think about having two copies of MC connecting to the one set of library files at the same time. Ever.

(3) No. You could only try to do this if two MC Servers (running Media Network) were operating on the one PC. You can't run two copies of MC Server on one PC. See (2).

(4) I don't think so, except at the OS/Video Driver/Video Hardware level if you can bind a program to a specific monitor. Hence, a VM with separate OS required, as MWillems says.


So, down the VM path for you.  

[masterjoe]

Ok, thank you for your replies

So even the "portable" install won't help for separating two instances configuration-wise?

VMs are wasting a lot of resources. Therefore this does not seem like a good solution...

[RoderickGI]

A portable install on a separate hard drive or USB drive would be a separate installation.

But I haven't used one, so I don't know if it would support Media Network, for example. There would probably still be the issue of two MC Servers running in the one memory space, or even one Server and one Client. MC detects if another instance is running. It may have trouble separating two instances in memory.