[mythtvnz] Mythbuntu 16.04 user experiences

[Paulgir]

> If you still have a backup database with all the old recordings in it,
> it is possible to get that data exported to the new system.  What you
> have to do is install a virtual machine somewhere that is running the
> same MythTV version as the old backup database.  Then you restore the
> old database on that virtual machine, and upgrade the version of
> MythTV to match the version on your real MythTV system.  Then you
> install mythexport and use its On The Go web page to mark all the old
> recordings in the database that you still have the files for to be
> exported.  When it starts an export job, mythexport first stores a
> .sql file to the export directory that contains all the data for the
> recordings being exported.  Then it copies all the recording files to
> that directory.  But I believe that if the recording files do not
> exist (as they will not on the virtual machine), it will still create
> the .sql file correctly.  So once it has done that, copy the .sql file
> to the real MythTV system, and install the mythimport package there,
> and then run mythimport on it.  All the data in the .sql file will be
> imported into your database, and will then automatically match up with
> the old recording files.
>
> If your old database does not quite match all the old recording files
> you have, you can still do this process, and then manually deal with
> the mismatched files.  There will be some files still without matching
> database entries - find_orphans.py will tell you what the files are.
> Those files will need to be moved to a videos directory.  Then you
> have to manually play each file, and rename it to whatever programme
> it contains.  For database entries that have no matching file,
> find_orphans.py will automatically delete the database entries for you
> if you tell it to.
>
> When doing such a large mythimport run, it is possible to have a
> problem with the import process, so it can stop in the middle with an
> error such as one recording that is in the old database is somehow
> matching one already in the new database.  If that happens, you can go
> back to mythexport and not mark that recording to be exported and try
> again.  But for that to work, you need all the recordings in the new
> database that have already been imported by mythimport to be removed.
> The only safe way I know of to do that is to backup the new database
> before starting the mythimport run, and doing the mythimport run at a
> time when there will be no recordings on the box for long enough for
> mythimport to complete successfully, or for it to fail and then for
> you to restore the backup database before the next recording.
>
> Having backed up and restored databases many times, I can tell you
> that if you follow the instructions, that process is very reliable so
> there is no worry about having to do it should there be a problem with
> importing the old database.  I have also used mythexport and
> mythimport extensively, but only so far on MythTV up to 0.27 - I have
> not tried it on 0.28 yet.
>
I have a quick question: are database backups from 0.27 compatible with  
0.28?