[mythtv-users] how to reinstall from scratch without losing existing recordings?

[Raymond Wagner]

On 3/17/2013 08:42, UB40D wrote:
> I seem to be having no luck in bringing mysql back to life (see thread
> "How to repair mysql?"), which has made me myth-less for a couple of
> weeks now.
>
> The prospect of reinstalling the whole of mythbuntu from zero on an
> empty partition is becoming increasingly likely.
>
> The database backups I have in /var/lib/mythtv/db_backups are not as up
> to date as I'd like but on the other hand I do have a right-up-to-date
> copy of the whole of /var, thus including the database itself. The
> actual recordings are on other partitions or physical drives.
>
> If I make myself a new / and a new /var and reinstall mythbuntu there,
> and then mount the recordings partitions somewhere accessible, can I
> just overwrite /var/lib/mysql/mythconverg with the equivalent from my
> backup or do I have to do something more elaborate?

The only reference MythTV has to those recordings is through the 
database.  If you cannot recover your database, MythTV has no way of 
knowing what file is what.  You can copy all those "lost" files into the 
video library, but you will need to manually go through them and figure 
out what they are.