[mythtv-users] Totally hosed Myth, could not upgrade from .27 to .28

[Stephen Worthington]

On Wed, 9 Nov 2016 14:47:12 -0500, you wrote:

>So this is kind of a long story which has resulted in my totally
>breaking MythTV, but bear with me please.
>
>Stats:
>Mythbuntu 14.04
>Myth .27+fixes
>Working fine for nearly 4 years
>
>This all began with me wanting to install Kodi on my dedicated MythTV
>frontend.  I could not connect to the backend with Kodi so I started
>looking into the Myth backend logs, which indicated that there was no
>security pin set.  I went into the MythTV backend setup and noticed
>that the security pin field was blank.  Entering 0000, rebooting,
>removing it, changing it to 1234, back to blank, back to 0000; none of
>these things helped.  I decided perhaps I should upgrade from .27 to
>.28 and maybe that would resolve the issue.  When I went into Myth
>Control Centre, I attempted to change the update repos from .27 to .28
>and I noticed that it was still asking me to input the
>"YouMustBeThisTallToRide" password to enable .28 as it still thought
>it was in beta.  I ran an update, an upgrade, etc. and it continued.
>I decided I would then remove MythTV (sudo apt-get remove mythtv) and
>reinstall.
>
>Since doing this, my install is completely screwed up.  MythTV Control
>Centre still shows .28 as beta, Mythweb is broken, and I can connect
>to the backend with my dedicated front end and the recordings display,
>but I cannot play them and only get a static green screen.
>
>I've removed and reinstalled Myth again to no avail.  I cannot run my
>frontend on my backend either; when I attempt to play a recording it
>just closes and goes back to the desktop.
>
>I am at a loss here.  It seems like I am probably best off purging all
>of this and restoring my database backup but I'm hoping it doesn't
>come to that.
>
>Any thoughts on the direction I should follow?
>
>Thanks.

Before you use Mythbuntu Control Center to upgrade, you are supposed
to click on the "Refresh Available Repositories" button to get it to
update the repository settings.  Doing that should get rid of the
"beta" indications.  So that is the first thing to do.

However, I have found that all upgrades of Mythbuntu, however done,
often suffer from bad repository settings as various tools do the
repository updates in different ways and do not check what other tools
might have done.  So after you update the repositories, you need to go
to your /etc/apt/ directory and in there check the sources.list file
and all the *.list files in the sources.list.d directory.  What you
are looking for is uncommented lines that point to repositories.  You
need to check that there are only ones that point to the right MythTV
repositories.  All references to 0.27 must be commented out, and if
they are not, you need to either comment out that line (add a # at the
start) or delete the entire file containing it (if it is no longer
relevant).  And then check that you have a 0.28 repository that is
uncommented and is the Mythbuntu PPA for 14.04 (trusty).

My mother's MythTV box is still running 14.04 but has been upgraded to
0.28, so here are her files (after I have cleaned them up) for
comparison.  First, the sources.list file.  We are in New Zealand, so
it is set up to use the local NZ Ubuntu repositories - yours will
likely point to your own local ones:

# deb cdrom:[Mythbuntu 12.04 _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64
(20120425)]/ dists/precise/main/binary-i386/

# deb cdrom:[Mythbuntu 12.04 _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64
(20120425)]/ dists/precise/multiverse/binary-i386/
# deb cdrom:[Mythbuntu 12.04 _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64
(20120425)]/ dists/precise/restricted/binary-i386/
# deb cdrom:[Mythbuntu 12.04 _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64
(20120425)]/ dists/precise/universe/binary-i386/
# deb cdrom:[Mythbuntu 12.04 _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64
(20120425)]/ precise main multiverse restricted universe

# See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade
to
# newer versions of the distribution.
deb http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty main restricted
deb-src http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty main restricted

## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the
## distribution.
deb http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates main
restricted
deb-src http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates main
restricted

## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the
Ubuntu
## team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive
any
## review or updates from the Ubuntu security team.
deb http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty universe
deb-src http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty universe
deb http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates universe
deb-src http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates universe

## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the
Ubuntu
## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself
as to
## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in
## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu
## security team.
deb http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty multiverse
deb-src http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty multiverse
deb http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates multiverse
deb-src http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates multiverse

## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as
## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it
includes
## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful
features.
## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any
review
## or updates from the Ubuntu security team.
deb http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-backports main
restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-backports main
restricted universe multiverse

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security main
restricted
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty-security multiverse

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's
## 'partner' repository.
## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical
and the
## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users.
# deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu precise partner
# deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu precise partner

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Ubuntu's
## 'extras' repository.
## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party
## developers who want to ship their latest software.
# deb http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main
# deb-src http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main

And in the sources.list.d directory there is just this:

total 20
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 10 13:57 ./
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Apr 18  2015 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  132 Jul 25 16:57 mythbuntu-0_28-trusty.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   55 Oct  4 04:34 scootersoftware.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   55 Jul 25 16:57 scootersoftware.list.save

The scootersoftware files are for some paid software I use to maintain
things, so ignore them.  You may have some like that for other PPAs
that you are using.  But for Mythbuntu, there should only be the one
file (mythbuntu-0_28-trusty.list), and it should look something like
this:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mythbuntu/0.28/ubuntu trusty main
# deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/mythbuntu/0.28/ubuntu trusty main


Once you have all that sorted, run:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

from root or with sudo and see if it works.