[mythtv-users] Upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 disasters - please help; (

[Nick Rout]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 12:46 AM, Ian Barton <lists at manor-farm.org> wrote:
>>> 'dpkg -l | grep myth | grep 21' returned nothing, I think apt-get was
>>> messed up.  I am currently thinking a clean install is the way to go.
>>> I have a mysql backup.  If I keep the media partisions I should be
>>> able to keep the recorded programs.
>>
>>
>> Might save you a lot of headaches in the long run, but it is a nerve
>> wracking proposition. My system has been upgraded from 8.04 -> 8.10 -> 9.04
>> -> 9.10 and its getting a little crufty :( But a clean install is a scary
>> thought. The size of media recordings makes it impractical to back them up.
>>
>> Plan thoroughly, backup what you can and step carefully I guess ;)
>>
> I have always found it faster to do a clean install. Provided you separate
> "/" on a different partition to /home and your media files it shouldn't be
> difficult. Make sure you back up the database and /etc to save reconfiguring
> things like /etc/fstab and other settings.

mythbunted unfortunately (1) historically does not create any more
partitions than / by default (2) keeps myth stuff under
/var/lib/mythtv, /var/lib/mythdvd and /var/lib/mytharchive (and
possibly more). (3) in later versions when it does set up a separate
partition for media mounts it at /var/lib (4) therefore if you keep
that partition you are keeping more than just your myth media files,
you also keep a whole bunch of other directories.* (5) resulting in a
bit of a mess.

OTOH knoppmyth does a sensible thing and puts ALL media, and anything
else you would want to survive a reinstall, under /mythtv.

So that's just another annoyance about mythbuntu. Still contemplating
a mass shift to LinHES (knoppmyth's successor) when I move to 0.22.
The idea of a rolling release is very appealing.

* acpi-support       gdm                mythtv            synaptic
alsa               guidance-backends  NetworkManager    sysv-rc-conf
apparmor           hal                nfs               tftpboot
apt                initramfs-tools    ntp               ucf
aptitude           initscripts        php5              ufw
avahi-autoipd      libuuid            PolicyKit         update-manager
belocs             locales            PolicyKit-public  update-notifier
bum                logrotate          python-support    urandom
dbus               misc               samba             vim
defoma             mlocate            scrollkeeper      x11
denyhosts          mpd                setserial         xkb
dhcp3              mysql              sgml-base         xml-core
displayconfig-gtk  mysql-cluster      snmp
dpkg               mytharchive        squeezeboxserver
gconf              mythdvd            squeezecenter