[mythtv-users] Upgrade motherboard/CPU without reinstalling FC5?

[Michael T. Dean]

On 09/07/2006 09:30 AM, list at onnow.net wrote:

>Quoting William Munson <wmunson at rochester.rr.com>:
>
>>kanetse at gmail.com wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>I have got a dedicated backend running MythTV-0.19-fixes.
>>>Unforunately, the motherboard got fried somehow when I was plugging in
>>>into a newly purchased UPS for the first time.  I replaced the
>>>motherboard and CPU; then just turned it on with the same install of
>>>FC5.  It can run and record shows, but it is somewhat unstable (kernel
>>>panic twice in 4 days).
>>>
>>>I noticed that the kernel panic is being caused by the ivtv module.
>>>Is there anyway I can salvage this installation without having to
>>>reformat my HDD and reinstall FC5?
>>>
>>>The old system was a Soyo P4VTE and a Celeron D340 (2.93 GHz), the new
>>>system is a Athlon XP-M 2800 ECS 741GX-M.
>>>
>>>My bt8x8-based ATi TV Wonder PCI also no longer records with sound, I
>>>suspect this is due to the ivtv replacing the msp3400 module that
>>>comes with the kernel.
>>>
>>Personally I would start over and save yourself hours of grief and
>>troubleshooting. Good opportunity to upgrade to the latest of everything.
>>    
>>
>I would not re-install.  Linux is very capable of hardware changes.   
>If you are up and running on your new hardware, and ivtv is causing  
>issues, re-installing and having the same install of ivtv will do the  
>same thing.  Total waste of time.  Just fix your ivtv.  Update to the  
>latest version, re-install ivtv, etc.....  Do a yum update and get  
>your system, kernel etc... to the latest version, nvidia drivers  
>etc... as well and then start from there.  Any issues that you cant  
>find help for elsewhere or in this list, then post here and people  
>will help.
>
>Re-install when an OS has issues is for Windoze IMHO
>

Yeah, after all, think of all the time you can save by not doing a 
4-hour install if you're just willing to spend a few days/weeks/months 
tracking down the issues with the current install.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I'm fully aware that installations will take 
different people different amounts of time, but I would also argue that 
the quicker you can do an install, the more likely you have the 
knowledge of the system configuration that's required to successfully 
track down and fix issues with the current install.  So, it's quite 
possible that the install time and the fix time will grow in parallel.  
And, the install time can be reasonably estimated.  The time required to 
find some unknown issue on the system is much harder to estimate.  
Regardless, the point is, install if you feel it would take less time 
than finding and fixing what's wrong with the current system.

The first thing I do when someone gives me a MS Word document to format 
is save it to a plain text file.  Then, I read that file into my word 
processor and begin to format it.  It's significantly easier to format 
from scratch than to undo the formatting that someone else did so I can 
format the document properly.  This is especially true when you admit 
that undoing the existing formatting requires finding all the (possibly 
hard-to-find) formatting that's already been done.  The same is true of 
finding the configuration issue in a system--which actually can be more 
complex because changes you make in searching for the configuration 
error may add new errors or affect other areas (possibly even obscuring 
the original error).

Mike