Mailing List Archive

On 3/30/20 1:12 PM, Andrew Codrington wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> Since I still have my health and some unplanned time at home I
> realized a potential project could be bringing my mythtv system up to
> date.
>
> Past experience tells me there will be hiccups but that upgrades go
> much better than decades past. Past experience also tells me that
> there might be upgrade paths with higher likelihood of success, and
> with less cursing!
>
> I'll give some background on where I'm at. If anyone has suggestions
> for a sequence of upgrades, or gotchas to avoid I would be very grateful.
>
> The system started as a mythbuntu install and has been upgraded a few
> times. I did have to start from scratch once, but the database could
> be 10+ years old.
>
> * Ubuntu 16.04LTS with mythtv 0.28 fixes
> * HDHomeRun connected to OTA antenna
> * HDPVR for cable TV capture
> * MCEUSB remote & IR blaster; blaster driving a Scientific Atlanta
> cable box with a channel changer script
> * Combined frontend/backend connected to TV; using mobo Intel
> graphics with VAAPI
> * 2 Apple TV 4 with the proprietary MythTV app from the App store
> (hasn't been updated for years, but works)
> * Macbook which I've never really got working with any pre-compiled
> builds of Mythfrontend, but it would be a nice bonus if a more
> recent release of mythtv had stable OSX frontend support
>
> Let me know if there's any more info I can provide.
>
> Thanks in advance for anything you can share.
>
> Cheers,
> Andrew
> --
> Andrew Codrington


Well, I'm not an expert, but I have been using Mythtv since before
Mythbuntu 14.04. So I've been thru my share of upgrades. You have a lot
more inputs than my system, so I'd expect issues. So with that in mind,
if it were me, I'd build up a complete new system. You could do this a
number of ways, but a simple way would be to get new hard drives and set
your old ones aside during the testing.  Load Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS,
install mythtv v31 via the ppa:mythbuntu/31 and configure it to work
with your HDHR, HDPVR. After you have it working on all your sources,
then you could restore you backup database, which you need to have saved
to a USB flash before you remove the old drives. Same for you
recordings. I backup all my mythtv related files to a NAS before I do
any upgrades.

Key points about restoring a database is keeping the Hostname on the old
and new systems the same. And I find I get less errors by having a new
working system prior to restoring the database and the recordings. I was
having a discussion with some guys here about doing just that so I could
switch from MariaDB to MySQL. Not sure why I want to do that since both
work fine, but I did it this morning in about an hour. Once all the
files were backed up, I shut down the current system so the network
would not have a problem with 2 computers with the same hostname.  Also
didn't want but one backend online at a time so the frontends could be
setup.

Not sure what luck you'll have with Apple products and Mythtv. Not much
support for OS X.  On my Macbook I run Kodi 18 with the kodi-pvr-mythtv
plugin whenever I have to use the Mac. I mainly use FireTV 4K and Shield
TV for frontends on V31 and a PC in a closet running Ubuntu 18.04.4
Server for the mythtv v31 backend. My test this morning that worked was:

1. backup mythtv-database on working Ubuntu 18.04 system, hostname
'mythbuntu', running mythtv v31 using MariaDB 10.1.

2. build new Ubuntu 18.04 system keeping hostname 'mythbuntu'

 3. install mythtv v31, from ppa:mythbuntu/31 which installs MySQL 5.7.
 4. setup xmltv and setup tv_grab_zz_sqlite so SD is the same as on
previous system.
 5. Run mythtv-setup so the 'mythtv' user gets created. logout/reboot.
 6. Run mythtv-setup and setup general -> database part, save and exit
 7. restore database from other system's backup.
 8. complete mythtv-setup for changes need for tuners, video sources,
and input connections.
 9. sudo su mythtv   and run mythfilldatabase

On Mon, 30 Mar 2020 13:12:11 -0400, you wrote:

>Hi there,
>
>Since I still have my health and some unplanned time at home I realized a
>potential project could be bringing my mythtv system up to date.
>
>Past experience tells me there will be hiccups but that upgrades go much
>better than decades past. Past experience also tells me that there might be
>upgrade paths with higher likelihood of success, and with less cursing!
>
>I'll give some background on where I'm at. If anyone has suggestions for a
>sequence of upgrades, or gotchas to avoid I would be very grateful.
>
>The system started as a mythbuntu install and has been upgraded a few
>times. I did have to start from scratch once, but the database could be 10+
>years old.
>
> - Ubuntu 16.04LTS with mythtv 0.28 fixes
> - HDHomeRun connected to OTA antenna
> - HDPVR for cable TV capture
> - MCEUSB remote & IR blaster; blaster driving a Scientific Atlanta cable
> box with a channel changer script
> - Combined frontend/backend connected to TV; using mobo Intel graphics
> with VAAPI
> - 2 Apple TV 4 with the proprietary MythTV app from the App store
> (hasn't been updated for years, but works)
> - Macbook which I've never really got working with any pre-compiled
> builds of Mythfrontend, but it would be a nice bonus if a more recent
> release of mythtv had stable OSX frontend support
>
>Let me know if there's any more info I can provide.
>
>Thanks in advance for anything you can share.
>
>Cheers,
>Andrew

You might like to find the thread where I posted about my 16.04 to
18.04 upgrade. There was a long list of niggly things that I had to
fix, but the major one is that the lirc package, as installed in
18.04, is badly broken. It is a packaging problem (several different
problems actually), not problems with the lirc code itself. As well
though, it is a major upgrade of the lirc code, so things work
differently and you will need to set up your configuration again under
the new system. As you are using a blaster, that is likely to be a
problem as I do not know how to make the new lirc version work with
blasters. For the rest, you will need to run my fix script for the
packaging problems:

http://www.jsw.gen.nz/mythtv/lirc-ubuntu-18.04-install.sh

and I can tell you how to configure the IR receiver. Or you can just
find the old threads here where that has already been discussed.
Searching for "lirc-ubuntu-18.04-install.sh" will likely find the
correct threads.

So I think that if at all possible, you need to try setting up a new
18.04 install on that PC to work out the lirc setup before you
consider upgrading. The way I normally do that is to have a separate
bootable partition where I can install new versions and try them. My
main SSD has two partitions so I can do this, and a couple of my hard
drives also have bootable partitions. If you do not have another
bootable partition suitable for this, you can create one on a drive by
using gparted to resize existing partitions to create the necessary
space. Or just temporarily add a new bootable drive.

If your MythTV box is quite busy, it may be difficult to find enough
time between recordings for having it booted to a different system.
You can use my gaps program to tell you when there is a big enough gap
in your recordings. I think for 0.28 you will need the old gaps 1.3
version, and the Utilities.py package:

http://www.jsw.gen.nz/mythtv/gaps-1.3
http://www.jsw.gen.nz/mythtv/Utilities.py

Put them in /usr/local/bin and rename gaps-1.3 to gaps.
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Jim Abernathy <jfabernathy@gmail.com> wrote:

> So with that in mind, if it were me, I'd build up a complete new system.

Having recently done this myself - going from 0.24.1 to 0.30 - I'd second that advice.

In my case, I was already setting up a new Xen host so created a VM to install the new backend onto (with no tuners) which I experimented with both that and the frontends (which were also new, the last of my old ones having died). Just for testing, I copied a couple of recording files to the videos directory.
When I was ready, and I spotted a couple of days gap till the next recording was due, I then did a disk swap and copied the VM to bare metal on my backend server.

For IR on the frontends (Intel NUCs bought second hand) I took the advice given here and used Flirc USB receivers. It's a bit overkill running a whole ARM processor just to handle a few IR signals, but they work and require no software setup on the devices they are connected to.

I've stil a few loose ends to tidy up, but the WAF is well up on the old system - not least the size of the NUC compared to the huge boxes I had before.

Simon

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On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 7:49 AM Simon Hobson <linux@thehobsons.co.uk> wrote:

> Jim Abernathy <jfabernathy@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > So with that in mind, if it were me, I'd build up a complete new system.
> Having recently done this myself - going from 0.24.1 to 0.30 - I'd second
> that advice.
>

Thanks for your tips and advice!

Our mythtv system is much less mission critical than it used to be. A few
days of outage isn't a big crisis but we would miss it if I couldn't get it
working eventually. It's just a way to record a few recent shows to watch
at our convenience.

I remember how obstinate lirc used to be before the magic of the mythbuntu
configuration tools. The idea of resolving the blaster by myself was
daunting but I came up with a good solution. We canceled cable completely.
Now I don't have a cable box at all and no need for the blaster. I just
have the rooftop antenna with an HDHomeRun dual tuner.

So, I:

- updated everything
- upgraded 16.04 LTS to 18.04 LTS
- added mythbuntu 31 PPA and updated again

The O/S upgrade went so smoothly I wasn't sure it had happened and had to
look up commands to check distro version...
The only thing I noticed that broke was lirc, as expected.
The mythtv upgrade from 29 to 31 also went super smoothly. The theme stayed
the same so I had to get deep into menus to find visible changes.

Great stuff.

I'm confident when I get a few minutes I can sort out the lirc remote
control using the search tips you've provided here previously. Until then
the mythtv app on our AppleTVs works fine.

One problem that survived all the upgrades is a mysterious mythfrontend
video playback artifact. That's a separate thread.

Thanks again Jim and Simon.