[mythtv-users] successful upgrades to ubuntu 18.04 from 16.04?

Stephen Worthington stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz
Wed Aug 1 16:52:58 UTC 2018


On Wed, 1 Aug 2018 12:25:35 -0400, you wrote:

>Anyone make the leap yet?
>
>So last time I went through this process (14.04 --> 16.04) it was a total
>unmitigated disaster as nothing worked afterwards. Apparently the
>combination of switching to systemd and a major upgrade to a new version of
>mysql just broke everything. I restored from backup and stayed on 14 for a
>while longer. waited until a slow weekend to do a complete 16.04 install
>from scratch and restored all the recordings and mythtv database and
>everything has been smooth sailing ever since.
>
>Hopefully with fewer drastic changes under the hood, in-place upgrading to
>18.04.1 will be less dramatic....
>
>But what would be the best way to go about it given that the mythtv PPA is
>not part of the ubuntu distribution?
>
>Options:
>
>1. do an in-place do-release-upgrade, re-add the mythbuntu PPA afterwards
>and hope for the best?
>
>2. remove the mythbuntu PPA before doing the upgrade, do-release-upgrade,
>and re-add the ppa?
>
>3. apt remove (or purge?) mythtv* and other myth-related packages before
>doing the upgrade, do-release-upgrade, add the PPA and reinstall all the
>packages?
>
>or 4. LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE and stay on 16.04 until 2021.
>
>Thanks

There are mythtv packages in Ubuntu 18.04 for v29, just not v29-fixes.
Upgrading automatically turns off all PPAs, so you can just upgrade
and add back in the PPAs afterwards to update back to v29-fixes.  As
always, when upgrading, do an image backup of your system first.  I
use a bootable Clonezilla image to do that.  When upgrading, I always
do it when I have enough time for a full Clonezilla backup, try the
upgrade, and then if it fails, do a Clonezilla restore to get back to
the old system again.  With a superfast NVMe SSD and a gigabit
Internet connection to a nearby clone of the Ubuntu repositories, that
does not take as long as it sounds, but I still need at least three
hours between recordings before I would try an upgrade.

But I also have a second bootable partition on my SSD, where I can run
a newer version for testing purposes.  I have not tried to upgrade to
18.04.1 yet, but I have tried 18.04 in a virtual machine with network
tuners and am happy so far with that.  So I plan to try upgrading my
alternate boot partition to 18.04.1 soon and see how that goes, before
I contemplate upgrading my production partition.

There is also a nasty complication if you are using an older Nvidia
GPU.  The Nvidia 304 drivers that are needed for the oldest GPUs are
gone in 18.04 and do not work with later kernels in 16.04 either.  The
304 drivers are no longer supported by Nvidia and do not compile
against 4.15 kernels without a patch, and Ubuntu's response to that
was to delete the 304 driver packages, since Nvidia will never be
fixing that.  The 340 drivers needed for less old Nvidia GPUs will no
longer be supported by Nvidia soon either - I think that happens late
2019 and the same thing is likely to happen then to the 340 packages.
So even if you stay on 16.04, there is likely to be a point where you
will not be able to install updated kernels without losing support for
older Nvidia GPUs.  And if you do need to update the kernel (eg
another Spectre type problem), then that will mean that lots of
perfectly good older Nvidia cards such as my GT220s will no longer be
supported and may have to be replaced even though they are still
working well.  And eventually, the latest MythTV versions will not be
available without updating anyway.


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