What's the best way to upgrade mythtv?

[thinkmega]

Let me explain what I meant.

I am running MythBuntu built 0.27.4 on top of ubuntu 14.04.1. It has been running fine since 2015. Right now I am looking to add WinTV-quadhd as the tuner source. What I understand is that this card is supported in kernel 4.x the least.

I've built mythtv 0.28.2, 0.27.7, and 0.29.1 from source code. They all work to some extent.

However, the 0.27.7 is the most stable one as far as I can tell. Here is the question: should I build the product from source code or get it from PPA? PPA route is something I haven't tried. I don't know if they are different from the github repository.

Any insight? Thanks!

[MikeB2013]

Sorry for the long response, but there are a few considerations to take account of as you are running an older version of mythtv on an older operating system.

In summary you need Ubuntu 16.04 for that Hauppauge card, and will need to install from their ppa see https://github.com/b-rad-NDi/Ubuntu-med ... el-builder.

Now for some details.

As far as the WinTV-quadHD (ATSC version by Hauppauge ) is concerned no Ubuntu stock kernel fully supports it as of writing. Most of the Hauppauge changes (but not quite all) have recently been incorporated upstream.

Hauppauge have a PPA that does support it on Ubuntu 16.04 (it installs a modified 4.4 series kernel, so you will need to adjust grub to boot into this kernel instead of 4.13 series kernel). Note the modifications to the kernel are for the Video 4 Linux media stack (which contains the device drivers).

You might, and I stress might (I have not tried this), get it to work on mythbuntu 14.04 by rebuilding v4l media stack as described at ("Basic" Approach) https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/ ... ce_Drivers

The Mythbuntu specfic distributions (14.04 and 16.04) have been retired.
Mythbuntu 14.04 is based on Ubuntu 14.04 and goes End of Life April 2019 for maintenance and security updates.
Mythbuntu 16.04, again based on Ubuntu 16.04 which goes End of Life April 2021.

Current recommendation for mythtv is to use Xubuntu 16.04, either server or desktop depending on your needs. Although I expect this to change to Xubuntu 18.04 sometime after it is released. I have been running mythtv 30pre on Xubuntu beta 18.04, both from mythtv PPA and built from source.

In place upgrade of the operating system 14.04 to 16.04 may or may not work (it has worked for some people and not for others). From my own experience it did not work. Was not a major issue for me, I just restored mythtv database backup on a clean install of Xubuntu 16.04, having installed current version of mythtv from the ppa.

Upgrading mythtv from 0.27 is usually easy, but take several mythtv database backups first and put them some where safe. It is so long since I did such an upgrade so I will leave it others on this forum to advise, particularly with reference to what is required on 14.04.

[fraserspur]

I recently upgrade mythbuntu 14.04 to ubuntu xenial with xfce and mythbuntu

First I backed backed up the mythtv (mythconverg) database and the system to a spare (old) hard disk. I also have a conservative backup procedure using ddrescue and a spare hard disk to mirror the system disk so I can always go back to the old system if the backup fails by simply switching drives.

After updating mythbuntu to ubuntu xenial with xfce using sudo apt-get dist-upgrade the system worked but had problems which I have mostly sorted.

The first problem was that mythtv packages were being held back, this meant that while TV and recording worked there were stability problems and some things like selecting music and playing it failed:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mythbuntu/0.29
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
fixed this.

The next issue turned out to be the backend wanting a login password when it started or restarted caused by the upgraded system trying to start the backend using the old init.d and the new systemd processes. This was solved by renaming \etc\init.d\mythtv-backend to mythtv-backend.OLD.

mythweb would not work in 16.04 - fixed by sudo apt-get install php-mysql

Tuners were misbehaving, slow to lock onto a signal and with quite a bit of what appeared to be interference. This was fixed by copying /lib/systemd/system to /etc/systemd/system and adding the following lines, depending on your tuners to the end of the file to delay the backend from starting until all of the tuners had loaded:
[Unit]
Wants=dev-dvb-adapter0-frontend0.device
After=dev-dvb-adapter0-frontend0.device
Wants=dev-dvb-adapter1-frontend0.device
After=dev-dvb-adapter1-frontend0.device

After rebooting, stop the backend 'sudo systemctl stop mythtv-backend.service' run mythtv-setup and delete all of the capture cards, video sources and input connections and then reinstate them (a phone camera is handy).

[thinkmega]

Thank you!

Wow, these insights save me a lot of time and detour. I think I am going to stay put with Mythbuntu 14.04 for now, until ..... 4k OTA arrives. lol.

A side comment toward mythtv, it is a great product. However, bugs were re-introduced from time to time. For people like me who know little about the architecture, it was not easy to deal with.

Thanks again for the comments above, really save me a lot of time.

[fraserspur]

You're welcome.

I have a linux system disk and separate disks for recordings, Live TV and etc. After a few problem upgrades, I installed a second backup hard disk into the system and before I upgrade linux & mythtv I image the linux system disk to the backup drive by booting linux from a USB drive and using ddrescue to create the image.

Then if an upgrade fails I simply replace the system disk with the backup disk and everything is asn it was before the upgrade.