[mythtvnz] Mythbuntu / MythTV 0.29

[Stephen Worthington]

On Thu, 28 May 2020 07:38:42 +1200, you wrote:

>Hi All
>
>I'm preparing to install a new version of Ubuntu (Xubuntu probably) with 
>MythTV
>
>Currently I using Mythbuntu 16.04 and MythTV 0.29
>
>Should I upgrade this to MythTV 0.31 before I install the new distro? I 
>intend to install the database from the previous distro in the new one.
>
>Can I go from 0.29 directly to 0.31 or do I need to go to 0.30 first?
>
>Are there any potential problems with the MythTV upgrades? I have done 
>one in the past that went smoothly.
>
>Any tips / suggestions are appreciated.
>
>-Paul

There are a number of potential problems with moving to a later
version of Ubuntu.  The biggest one is that if you use an IR remote,
then between 16.04 and 18.04 lirc changed to a major new version and
you will need to change your configuration to match the new version.
If you are installing 18.04, the lirc package is severely broken and
you will need to run the fix script I wrote to fix it:

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

There were a number of other more minor problems I had with my upgrade
to 18.04 - I posted about it here on the mythtv-users mailing list,
but I can not find the thread today.  I do remember having problems
with php being upgraded and mythweb stopping working until I fixed
that.  And if you use mythexport that needs a fix or two for a php
change.

In 20.04, the lirc package would not install on new systems (upgrading
older systems did work).  The fix for that is out now, but I have not
tested any further yet to see if there are more problems after that
show stopper one.  Given the huge number of problems lirc had in
18.04, I am not confident it will be OK in 20.04.  They were all
packaging problems though - the underlying lircd daemon and lirc
libraries were fine and would work if manually configured properly. So
I would expect the same if there are more problems with 20.04's lirc.
I am hoping to find some more time in the next few days to try 20.04
and lirc again in a virtual machine.  If there are more problems with
lirc I am happy to help fixing them - I have gotten to know a fair bit
about lirc now.

Be aware that if you want to upgrade your existing 16.04 rather than
do a new clean install, it is not possible to officially upgrade from
18.04 to 20.04 yet.  That will happen with the 20.04.1 release
expected for June some time.  Some people have forced the upgrade by
adding the -d option to do-release-upgrade to tell it to upgrade to
what it considers to be a development release, and have not reported
any major problems with doing that.

Upgrading MythTV multiple versions at once only requires that the
MythTV version has the database upgrade code back to the old version
you are running.  So 0.29 to v31 is fine.  I have not done v30 to v31
yet due to my mother's PC having being stuck on 16.04 and the v31
packages not being available for that.  I have now fixed that and I am
expecting to get around to upgrading to v31 in the next month,
preferably before 20.04.1 is out and I do that upgrade.

If you are going from 0.29 to v31 you can not do that on a 16.04
system due to the lack of v31 packages, so you would need to do that
upgrade by installing v31 on the new system and migrating the database
there.  It does not matter if you upgrade the MythTV version before or
after you move to the new system, but it is probably a bit easier to
do it before as then you are not having to fix both MythTV and system
problems at the same time.  But you can only upgrade as far as v30
while still on 16.04.

Be aware that with the v31 upgrade in Ubuntu, MythTV migrates to using
Python 3.  If you want to still use Python 2 with MythTV, you will
need to compile and install MythTV from source using the option to
compile for Python 2.  And you would need to install Python 2 on 20.04
- it is not installed by default.  But I would recommend moving to
Python 3 if at all possible, as you will need to make that upgrade
soon anyway.  I will need to update all my Python 2 programs for
MythTV to Python 3 when I upgrade, but I am not anticipating too many
problems with that.  And I am looking forward to using all the new
features in Python 3.