[mythtv-users] partial database restore

UB40D ub40dd at googlemail.com
Mon Sep 16 23:11:08 UTC 2013


Restoring only the useful parts of a database

I had a mythbuntu system that would often give "recorder failed" and
litter the media library with 4 identical entries of the failed
recording, each with "this file cannot be found" if you selected it,
which were a pain to delete. Since I was not able to fix the issue, I
decided to reinstall everything from zero on a new hard disk. I did
take a backup of the database before reinstalling.

I would now like to restore the old recordings (the ones that work)
and their metadata. In particular what I'd like is, for each .mpg, its
name, description and the manually-entered cut list that defines the
ads to be skipped. I don't terribly mind losing the date that the
shows were recorded or the channel they came from, but I would very
much mind losing the cut lists and of course the film names, which I
understand would happen if I just copied the mpgs into the video
directory.

However I don't really want to restore all of the old database which
is full of that junk (empty entriesfor orphaned recordings
that never happened). I am also suspicious that the
faulty behaviour of the old system was perhaps due to
slightly incorrect backend configuration (channels, capture cards,
video sources, input connections etc) that might be stored in the
database as well; I don't want to overwrite the new ones of the
reinstalled system that finally work with the old ones that didn't.

I have read
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Database_Backup_and_Restore#Change_the_hostname_of_a_MythTV_frontend_or_backend
and noticed their insistence on how bad a partial restore is, and that a
full restore is what every sane person should do. However I fear that
if I do a full restore I'll end up with as broken a system as the one I had
before reinstalling.

I would simply like to restore the names and cut lists of the .mpgs
that I have. Nothing else. Can I? What should I do? Is it OK to take the
database dump and, before importing it, delete everything except the
statements for the tables that contain the names and cut lists?
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