[mythtv] MythTV life-cycle support intentions

[Michael T. Dean]

On 07/25/2012 12:39 PM, Steven Adeff wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 7:53 PM, Brian J. Murrell wrote:
>> On 12-07-24 04:40 PM, John Pilkington wrote:
>>> If the only problem there is recovering recordings the 'native archive'
>>> mode of MythArchive might be a starting point.
>> Automate the whole downgrading procedure so that it "mytharchives" the
>> recordings done since the upgrade, restores the pre-upgrade database and
>> then restores the mytharchived recordings and you might have some more
>> interest in beta/rc-testing.
>>
>> Seriously.
> My concern there would be if the recorded table changes due to the upgrade.
>
> Is there a way to populate an existing table with data from another
> table, ignoring any new fields in the source that do not exist in the
> target?
>

This is why the approved solution is to put any "not recorded by /this/ 
MythTV instance and database" videos into Video Library.

FWIW ( http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Database_Backup_and_Restore ):

    mythconverg_backup.pl

and put the resultant backup file somewhere safe.  Then upgrade, record 
a bunch of shows and find out hours/days/weeks/months later that the new 
version completely destroys your favorite feature. So:

   mythlink.pl --link /mnt/pretty --format '%Y%m%d-%H%i-%eH%ei-%T-%S'

then

   mythconverg_restore.pl --drop_database --create_database \
       --filename mythconverg-1214-20080626150513.sql.gz

and downgrade.  Then, using the links--which are sorted by date/time, 
you can get a good title/subtitle for each recording made after the 
upgrade and move it to use that name and place it in the Video Library 
directories, where it's available.  Or, just use mythvidexport.py to 
move the new recordings to Video Libray before you downgrade.

Note that when I'm working on my dev system, I always do at least one 
restore to a previous (known-good, previous-release-version) database 
backup each night and also create a new backup after updating listings.  
It's actually not uncommon for me to do multiple (sometimes tens of) 
backups/restores per night.  I don't know of any way I can make it 
easier for users (though I get the feeling that some users are "too 
smart" to need the scripts we have, so maybe that's why so many think 
it's difficult to backup/restore the MythTV database).

Mike