Booting between MythTV versions using BIOS boot menu.

[Steve Goodey]

I have a working Mythbuntu 16.04/MythTV 29 with a SSD for the operating system and a SATA hardrive with the recordings on, which is working fine. Using the same PC I would like to also have a Xubuntu 16.04/MythTV 29 which is built from source which I want to use for checking patches. For the Xubuntu/MythTV 29 built from source I was thinking of putting that on a USB hardrive for operating system and recordings and then using the BIOS F10 boot menu to switch between them.

Does this sound like a workable arrangement? I'm concerned that when running the Xubuntu option it might interfere with the Mythbuntu database and vice versa. Should I make the database names differnet?

I don't want to have a dual boot system permanently as the Xubuntu option would be used very rarely.

Regards, Steve.

[paulh]

Are these combined frontend/backend setups or just frontends that will connect to a shared backend?

If it's the latter you could run into problems with both setups connecting to the same DB which it sounds like you don't wont to happen in case it screws something up

If they are both combined frontend/backends then you wont have a problem since you would have two different setups each with there own database that can't interfere with one another. You wouldn't by default be able to see the recordings made on one setup in the other which could be a good thing but depends on what you want to test. You do have the headache of having to setup and maintain two independent setups though.

[Steve Goodey]

Thanks Paul. Combined frontend/backend setups. And I don't think I'll need to access recordings between them. At a pinch I could use a USB key for that.

As for the two setup headache, hopefully it'll keep my brain active.

On the one built from source, would I be right in thinking that a git pull is required each time to get updates and then dist clean, then ./configure, make, make install? Sorry if this is basic stuff I should know.

Steve.

[paulh]

Most of the time you can avoid recompiling everything by doing
git pull
make -j4
sudo make install

Occasionally you will have to do the full recompile with
make distclean
./configure
make -j4
sudo make install

Generally if you see a commit that updates mythversion.h then you will have to do the full recompile.