upgrade from scratch

[marcw]

I'm thinking it's time to upgrade all my v28.2 boxes on ubuntu 16.04 to the latest myhttv (v31?) on 20.04. They will all be fresh installs from scratch. Will a database backup (to my NAS) from my v28.2 BE properly restore to my new v31 BE? Same hardware. Or will there be additional hoops to jump through? Thanks.

[bill6502]

I recommend https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Release_Notes_-_31 . Especially the Major Changes
and Special Notices & Instructions (which has a link to backup and restore).

[jfabernathy]

I'm thinking it's time to upgrade all my v28.2 boxes on ubuntu 16.04 to the latest myhttv (v31?) on 20.04. They will all be fresh installs from scratch. Will a database backup (to my NAS) from my v28.2 BE properly restore to my new v31 BE? Same hardware. Or will there be additional hoops to jump through? Thanks.

After the you checkout the release notes, there are some things to think about. Are your tuners PCIe card or network. You need to check the driver situation if they are PCIe card. Also V31 uses XMLTV for SchedulesDirect EPG data. That's great because the end product is better, but a bit intimidating the first time.
If you backup all you recordings and you datbase you can always restore. Some times I build from scratch get everything working then restore my old database. You still have some checking and fixing to do with mythtv-setup, but it's minor compared to the clean build.

A clean build from scratch using Ubuntu 20.04 and v31 on any PC less than 10 years old will take about 30 minutes. At least it does for me. I can point you to my blog for a fresh build for either a RPI or PC. You'd just need to do the backups first.

For RPI 4 https://mythtv-rp4.blogspot.com/2020/11 ... rpi-4.html
For PC https://mythtvinstall.blogspot.com/2020 ... m-and.html

[marcw]

At first glance your PC instructions look like the winning entry. Your hardware looks similar to mine. I'll study the rest of the blog before I dig in. Thanks!

[heyted]

If you prefer to minimize the need to use the command line, Mythbuntu Control Panel is available. Either way works.

[marcw]

Thanks for that tip! Wow, that MCP has sure come a long ways since last I saw it! Matter of fact, I'm now thinking I'm going to try it. My main concern with the whole upgrade process isn't the new OS, (done that dozens of times), or even the new XMLTV for Schedules Direct. It seems like the MCP handles most of that. Rather, it's the database upgrade. I've got a few hundred movies sitting in my NAS and many dozens of OTA (HDHomeRun) TV shows recorded and scheduled and I'm just nervous about restoring properly. It's not like I do a MythTV database upgrade every week. That's why I suspect I'll be utilizing your blog extensively.

[jfabernathy]

I found some instructions I used several years ago when I migrated the database and recordings. You might want to compare these to what is current.

32. Since I was building a new Mythtv backend, I transferred over the old recordings to the new directories.
33. I ran a mythtv database backup on the old system so I could restore it after the install and keep my current recordings and settings on the new system:

/usr/share/mythtv/mythconverg_backup.pl

34. I moved of copy of the database backup file to my NAS and the new mythtv backend.
35. Restore the database you just saved by:

/usr/share/mythtv/mythconverg_restore.pl --drop_database --create_database --filename /full path to directory/mythconverg-1214-20080626150513.sql.gz
## for example ##

[marcw]

Thanks! I suspect I may be starting the process within a week or so. Still working on the WAF. Hopefully I'll be relaying success results as I go rather that SOS requests.