[mythtv-users] when and how to upgrade to 0.29

[Brian J. Murrell]

On Sun, 2017-11-26 at 10:39 +0000, Jim Abernathy wrote:
> So I have a healthy mythtv backend working on mythbuntu 16.04 with
> 0.28 with all the latest 0.28 updates.

Excellent.  So it's all working perfectly and nothing is broken, right?

> Since I have cut the cord from satellite TV I depend on mythtv more
> than ever.

Understood.

> So I need upgrading to 0.29 to not cause any issues.

This doesn't square with your opening statement.  You said your system
is already "healthy", so what issues do you foresee coming from just
leaving it alone?

If you have a healthy and stable system already and it's meeting all of
your needs, why mess with it?  At best you are only going to get the
same stable and healthy system and at worst, with some non-
insignificant probability, you will be introducing new problems that
will need to be worked out.

I'm not sure I see how you are any further ahead even with the "best"
outcome above.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

> 1.  Should I upgrade to 0.29; what benefit would I get

Exactly.  Assuming your current system is stable and meeting all of
your requirements.

> other than I'm
> assuming future work will be done on 0.29 and not 0.28?

But if your existing system is stable and meeting all of your needs,
what do you care about where future work will be done?

> 2.  I don't record much during the day so I would have 8 hours during
> most days that the backend would be idle. I'll assume that's enough
> time, easily.

I could not stress enough that you take backups, do snapshots, whatever
else you need to return back to where you started should things go
south.  Personally I'm a huge fan of being able to take a snapshot
(LVM, ZFS, btrfs, etc.) before an upgrade and being able to revert back
to that snapshot if things go south.  But that takes a bit of
understanding of how snapshots work and how to configure your system to
be able to boot from or otherwise use them.

For reverting back to a known working state, snapshots beat backups
hands-down in my opinion.  Snapshots usually even let you revert
without destroying your upgrade so you can switch back and forth as you
need.

But really, I would stress that you should really ask yourself why you
think you need to upgrade other than just because "it's the latest" if
everything is already running smoothly.

Cheers,
b.
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