[mythtv-users] Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS do-release-upgrade with Mythtv

[Jim Abernathy]

On 10/7/18 11:37 AM, Stephen Worthington wrote:
> On Sun, 7 Oct 2018 08:02:02 -0400, you wrote:
>
>> Has anybody who has a working Ubuntu 16.04.5 system with mythtv backend
>> V29 been brave enough to run do-release-upgrade and see what happens?
>>
>> And No I'm not that brave.
>>
>> Jim A
> Yes, I have just done it and am working through the resulting issues.
>
> I was running a combined frontend+backend v29 system on 16.04.5, but
> without HWE, so it was still on kernel 4.4.  The upgrade to 18.04.1
> went as normal - no problems in the process.  I had a number of /etc
> files that were modified and I had to patch my changes into the new
> versions (or patch the new bits of the new versions into my old
> files), but that happens every upgrade.  I use MariaDB, having
> switched to that at the 16.04 upgrade.  That caused no problems.
>
> The startup and particularly the shutdown times for 18.04 are faster
> than for 16.04 - especially if you are using an SSD system drive which
> can support much more parallel activity than rotating rust.  The work
> done on systemd in 18.04 looks like it has paid off.
>
> The upgrade process did still take several hours, even though I have a
> fast NVMe SSD and a gigabit connection to a nearby Ubuntu repository.
> If your MythTV box is busy like mine is, you might like to use my
> "gaps" Python program to find a large enough gap in your recording
> schedule to do the upgrade.  It is available on my web server:
>
> http://www.jsw.gen.nz/mythtv/gaps
>
> and I think you will also need my fixed version of the Utilities.py
> library from the Wiki (put it in the same directory):
>
> http://www.jsw.gen.nz/mythtv/Utilities.py
>
> The issues I know about:
>
> 1) If you have an old Nvidia card that requires the 304 drivers, do
> not do the upgrade as the 304 drivers are not available for 18.04 as
> Nvidia has stopped support for them, which made Ubuntu also delete
> support for them.
>
> 2) If you are using a frontend on the same box, then you will likely
> need lirc to work, and as installed by the 18.04 lirc package, it is
> badly broken.  See the recent "Remote control issue after Ubuntu
> upgrade" and "Blasting to STB,using a MCEUSB" threads here.  I have a
> script on my web server to fix it so it works:
>
> http://www.jsw.gen.nz/mythtv/lirc-ubuntu-18.04-install.sh
>
> I have just updated the script for a new problem I discovered today.
> On my laptop (which I have also just upgraded from 16.04 to 18.04.1),
> I use a USB tuner with a builtin IR receiver.  I only start
> mythbackend and mythfrontend when I am using the laptop for TV, and
> when I am using it for other things, I normally do not plug in the USB
> tuner.  That caused the new lirc to fill up syslog with error
> messages.  It turned out that the lirc package now also installs a
> systemd unit to run irexec in the background using a default config.
> Having irexec running when lirc does not have an IR receiver available
> was causing all the spurious error messages.  So that background job
> needs to be disabled:
>
> sudo systemctl stop irexec
> sudo systemctl disable irexec
>
> 3) The ext4 drivers have been updated, so you will no longer be able
> to run fsck of 18.04 ext3 and ext4 partitions from earlier versions. I
> have a separate partition I use to boot to do repairs on my main
> system partition, including doing a full fsck on all my partitions
> after a power failure, and I had to update that to 18.04 as well.  You
> can still boot from an 18.04 live DVD to do repairs, but older
> versions will not work.  So make sure you have what you need for
> repairs available before you upgrade, just in case.  And you will need
> a recent version of clonezilla also to properly handle the new ext4
> updates, if you want to use it to do an image backup of your system
> after upgrading.
>
> 4) The x11vnc VNC server seems to be broken in the new 18.04 version.
> It crashes whenever I try to use the menu on the MythTV box over a VNC
> connection.  I am still working my way through this problem - I may
> have to use a different VNC server.  The recommendation I found on the
> web to switch my display manager to lightdm did not work - I was
> already using lightdm as that is the default in Mythbuntu (and Xubuntu
> I think).
>
> 5) The new OpenVPN version had one of its server config lines change
> syntax, so it failed to run until I fixed that.  If you are using an
> OpenVPN server, check its log to see if you have a problem like that.
>
> 6) logrotate is now being pedantic about the permissions in the
> /etc/logrotate.d directory.  The files must be 0644 or 0444 or it
> ignores that file.  The files ignored are listed in the email sent by
> the daily logrotate cron job.
>
> 7) SAMBA/CIFS has been updated to a newer version, which will no
> longer connect to older (now insecure) versions of the SMB protocol
> unless you add options to override the SMB protocol version.  I am
> still running an older version of SAMBA on my OS/2 server box, so I
> had to add the option ",vers=1.0" to all my mount points in fstab for
> that box.
>
> 8) PHP has been updated to version 7.2.  On one of my boxes (I forget
> which), PHP 7.0 had not been disabled, and that made mythweb and
> mythexport not work.  I had to manually disable PHP 7.0:
>
> sudo a2dismod php7.0
>
> Then I had to do these commands as per several other threads here:
>
> sudo cp -a /etc/php/7.0/apache2/conf.d/20-mythweb.ini
> /etc/php/7.2/apache2/conf.d/20-mythweb.ini
> sudo a2enmod php7.2
> sudo systemctl restart apache2
>
> I think that after that I could uninstall the PHP 7.0 packages, but I
> have not tried that yet.
>
> 9) The Perl setup has been upgraded, and that made the mythexport Perl
> .cfi files fail to find their library files which are in the same
> directory as they are.  I had to modify all the
> /usr/share/mythtv/mythexport/*.cgi files to add a line:
>
> use lib '.';
>
> to the use statements at the top of each file.
>
> 10) The Python 2 version has been upgraded, and in doing so a module I
> was using in my "mythsgu" Python program that uses the MythTV API was
> unable to be found
> (backports.shutil_get_terminal_size.get_terminal_size).  It must have
> been split out into a separate package rather than the one it was in
> for 16.04, so I had to find it in its new package and install that:
>
> apt install python-backports-shutil-get-terminal-size
>
> 11) The problem I have had since I upgraded to 16.04 where the ALSA
> output for my SPDIF connection to my DAC keeps getting randomly turned
> off 1-3 times a day is still present in 18.04.1.  I will have to try
> and track down the source of that - it is annoying to be watching a TV
> recording and have the sound disappear and have to do an "alsactl
> restore" command to get it back again.
>
> 12) anacron seems to be running the daily cron jobs at a different
> time - about an hour earlier than it used to.  I have changed the
> /etc/crontab settings back to the old times, but I will have to wait
> until tomorrow to see if that fixes it.  The old times were normally a
> time when I do not have any recordings happening, or only one
> recording.  Having the cron jobs run earlier was a problem as the
> system could be too busy at the time and have recordings fail due to
> the huge overheads on the database when it is checked and backed up by
> anacron.
>
> 13) On my main MythTV box, but not on my laptop, I am getting several
> messages (from grub, I think) saying "symbol table not found" and
> "press any key to continue".  They do not cause any problems - the
> boot process proceeds normally.  But I will need to look at why they
> are happening.
>
> That is all I can remember at the moment - I will update this thread
> if I find anything new.
> _______________________________________________


I had some time on this raining day to review in more detail what you 
found going from 16.04 to 18.04. Some things I noted for my installation:

1.  In my case the backend is built on 16.04 Server version and is still 
on the 4.4.0-138-generic x86_64. It is up to date with the latest Ubuntu 
and Mythtv software.

2.  My only tuner is a SiliconDust Homerun HD Quatro, so no driver 
issues.  Not sure about systemd changes I might need.

3.  I've use "ssh -X jim at mythbuntu" so I can run mythtv-setup on the 
backend.

4.  The 4 drives on the backend are configured by mdadm to be 2 sets of 
mirrors.

5.  I have a APC USP to backup the power and shutdown the system if loss 
of power is more than 30 minutes. So I use the  apcuspd software and 
cgi-gui.

6.  I also use mythweb to work the tv record schedule.

7.  Since I'm on MariaDB from 16.04 install, I'm hoping the changes I 
had to do to allow remote FEs will still work and upgrade in place.

So I'm thinking I may not have too big an issue.

Comments?

Jim A