MythTV Official Community Forum

Hey all,

I have an old install of Mythbuntu with .27 running as a dedicated backend inside an LXC container on my KVM/LXC server.

The setup works pretty well, but I am thinking it might be time to do an upgrade.

Rather than upgrading in place I am considering doing a fresh install, and importing my database.

A lot has changed since I last did this, so I have a few questions.

1.) Can I go straight from .27 to .29, or will my current database be too old?

2.) MythBuntu has now died a long time ago. What is the recommended install method today? I was considering starting with either an Ubuntu server or Lubuntu install, to keep things nice and light. This guide seems pretty outdated (it even mentions creating upstart start scripts, but Ubuntu has moved on to systemd for some time now). If I follow this on a modern Ubuntu version, will it still work?

Much obliged,
Matt

Disclaimer I don't use containers, so the rest of this post relates to desktop version of the operating system.

Yes, you can go directly to mythtv 29 will automatically upgrade your 0.27 database, it might take a while (depends on size) so be prepared to wait - there is no progress indication.
I recommend taking several backup copies of the mythconverg database and putting them somewhere safe before upgrading or restoring from backup.

You could do this on 16.04 if you want by doing :
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mythbuntu/0.29
sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade

Note that mythtv 29 has a different UI (User Interface), does the same things but looks a little different, mainly in setup screens.

In-place operating system upgrade from 16.04 to 18.04 generally works (I have done it a few times, but my usage is pretty simple, in the end I did a clean install just to make sure of a clean system). You might want to checkout this thread on mythtv users mailing list http://lists.mythtv.org/pipermail/mytht ... 97521.html

If you do a fresh install of 18.04 beware of the following
user is not added to mythtv group automatically (gksu removed from 18.04) fix with sudo adduser $USER mythtv
The mythconverg database password you used previously in .mythtv/config.xml file will no longer be valid, a new one is generated and can be found in /etc/mythtv/config.xml

Mike

Forgot to answer your other questions:
mythtv 29 provides systemd service files, the mention of upstart in the guide is only for older systems e.g. 14.04.
You can use Ubuntu server, Lubuntu, Xubuntu etc. I generally use Xubuntu, but have used Lubuntu.

Mike

MikeB2013 wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 09, 2018 6:15 pm

Forgot to answer your other questions:
mythtv 29 provides systemd service files, the mention of upstart in the guide is only for older systems e.g. 14.04.
You can use Ubuntu server, Lubuntu, Xubuntu etc. I generally use Xubuntu, but have used Lubuntu.

Mike

Thank you for your excellent information!

I just realized I don't have a clue what the database password on my install is. Hopefully I can figure that out.

I wonder if I could just make this easier on myself by doing an in-laws e upgrade of my old Myhtbuntu install from 14.04 to 16.04, upgrade all the packages and then do the same thing again to 18.04..


Database backups shouldn't be an issue. I have that automated in cron, dumping them to my redundant NAS nightly, and keeping a months worth, just in case.

I had a database corrupt on me early on and had to start from scratch, so I wanted to avoid that every happening again.

From your favorite browser: yourBackendHostNameOrIP:6544/Myth/GetConnectionInfo?Pin=0000
will return the password. The Pin may need to be changed if you've set something else.

bill6502 wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 10, 2018 10:52 pm

From your favorite browser: yourBackendHostNameOrIP:6544/Myth/GetConnectionInfo?Pin=0000
will return the password. The Pin may need to be changed if you've set something else.

Thank You!

Not very secure if anyone can access it on the local network though :p I did not realize you could pull the contents of the config file remotely like that.

Fixed my typo in the above, Pin, not SecurityPin.

Changing the backend security pin is a good idea.

In v30-Pre, a new endpoint allows users to select which API services to protect
via digest authentication.

bill6502 wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 11, 2018 2:58 pm

Fixed my typo in the above, Pin, not SecurityPin.

Changing the backend security pin is a good idea.

In v30-Pre, a new endpoint allows users to select which API services to protect
via digest authentication.

Hmm.

I got delayed on this upgrade, and now I'm back focusing on it because Ubuntu 14.04 LTS goes EOL this month.

I tried doing a in place upgrade from 14.04 to 16.04 using do-release-upgrade, which eventually failed when I got a pink popup screen asking me a bunch of questions about the mysql database I couldn't answer.

Luckily I snapshotted the drive before starting, so I could roll back and try again.

This time I did as you suggested and used my browser to pull up the information page to get the database first. I plan on trying again soon.

My approach will be:

1.) do-release-upgrade to get from 14.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS
2.) Add the mythbuntu repositories for 0.29 (will this work now that mythbuntu is no longer with us?)
3.) Hopefully things will just work once done, but I am sure I'll have plenty of troubleshooting to do.

My plan is to just stay on 16.04. No need to go nuts. Older releases tend to be more stable anyway, as long as your hardware isnt so new that you need something newer, which mince certainly isn't.

Hmm.

I just realized .30 is out.

Maybe I should just jump straight to that...