[mythtv-users] Upgrade risk assessment (UPDATE--ubuntu 8.04 success!)

[Scott Traurig]

Scott Traurig wrote:
> Environment: ubuntu 7.10, mythtv 0.22 build 16578 (13 Mar 08)
> 
> My "production machine", i.e. the machine that my wife will kick my
> ass if it doesn't remain completely stable, has recently ended 154
> days of fabulously stable uptime and finally required a reboot.  
> 
> After the mandatory ass-kicking :-) I took advantage of the situation
> to, at no small risk, to apply the 100+ pending updates to ubuntu
> 7.10. As luck would have it everything appears to have turned out
> well.   
> 
> Now the million dollar question is: should I go ahead and let the
> Update Manager update the machine to ubuntu 8.04? I've heard that
> going to 8.04 (Hardy) requires 0.22. The build of 0.22 I'm running
> pre-dates the QT4 dependency. It would seem I'm in a good position to
> go forward.    
> 
> That said of course I am flirting with breaking the "If it ain't
> broke..." rule. Nevertheless does anyone have any experience or
> guidance with this transition? Your tales of success or failure would
> be most appreciated.   
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Scott

I pushed the jolly, candy-like upgrade button last night. I very carefully
did NOT let it replace any configuration files every time it offered to do
so. I DID let it remove obsolete packages. Two hours later (I guess my
download speed is not very good) I had a completely running, apparently
stable system. Samba, Apache, Mythweb and VNC are all running OK, too. And
Firefox is FAR more stable :-).

One thing I did notice is it killed off nvidia-settings, which I run as a
startup session in order to adjust the brightness and contrast more to my
liking (defaults make playback in Myth way to dark). I had to reinstall it
but it picked up the old settings immediately. It also disabled all my
non-standard software repositories but that's an easy fix. There may be a
few other things but I'd say I'm at 99% production readiness.

For those of you thinking of taking the plunge all I can say is I am one
more successful data point. For those of you who suggested a complete
rebuild/going to mythbuntu, etc. that was exactly what I was trying to
avoid. That was the emergency backup solution!

With 8.10 imminent I feel a lot better :-)

Thanks,

Scott