[mythtv-users] Moving mythbackend, how to copy important tables?

[TJ Harris]

On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 11:26 AM, Michael T. Dean
<mtdean at thirdcontact.com> wrote:
> On 01/13/2010 12:25 PM, Stuart Larson wrote:
>>>
>>> I am moving my mythbackend over to new hardware, in part because my
>>> old backend had some unexplained flakiness.   So, I don't want to copy
>>> the entire DB over and potentially bring the flakiness along.   But, I
>>> would like to keep a few things, such as the record of the programs I
>>> have previously recorded/viewed so that they are not recorded again.
>>> Maybe my recording schedule too, but that would not be too hard to
>>> re-create.
>>>
>>> Anyone have guidance on which tables to copy in this scenario, or any
>>> gotchas to watch out for?    Or, am I better off not trying to do
>>> partial copies?
>>>
>>
>> This might be a good starting point:
>>
>> http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Database_Backup_and_Restore
>>
>> Also, search the list archives as this has come up in the past.
>
> And, really, you don't want to, "copy important tables."  You want to backup
> all tables and restore all tables.  There's no benefit to doing a partial
> restore.  The only way that a partial restore will improve performance on
> your system is if you have changed settings to incorrect values (i.e.
> messing with Playback Profiles or whatever), and there are much easier ways
> of fixing those issues than "reconfigure everything from scratch" (which,
> interestingly, would still allow you to misconfigure things, again).
>
> As Roy mentioned, keeping the same hostname for all backends makes things a
> /lot/ easier.

Thanks for the responses.   I guess the recommendations seem to be "do
a complete DB copy or don't do it at all".

Unfortunately, one of my main reasons for moving the backend was to
fix some strange behavior of my current backend (mythbackend unable to
locate recording records in the DB) so I don't want to carry whatever
problem is on my old backend to the new one.  So, doing a complete DB
migration is not an option for me.  Also, the system the old backend
was on is not going away,  so using the same IP and hostname is not
feasible either.

The majority of the DB data is easily reproduced by configuration on
the new backend.   The main piece I wanted to transfer was the record
of previously recorded programs, so that mythtv is not recording a
bunch of stuff I've already seen.    I've got a backup of my pristine
database,  so maybe I'll try copying and see how it goes.   Or, maybe
I'll just manually delete the duplicate recordings.