[mythtv-users] BE3 - Issues with installation and database

[Stephen Worthington]

On Mon, 27 May 2019 12:59:06 -0500, you wrote:

I just found this reply had never been sent from my outbox, probably
due to a problem I had with my email server yesterday.  So I am
sending it now.

>Hi Stephen!
>
>
>OK, there are three problems I can see in the pastebin log.  Two are
>minor and one is fatal.
>
>The two minor ones are:
>
>1) If you are wanting to use a remote with the frontend on this PC,
>you do not have LIRC working yet, so the remote will not work.
>
>    Yes: will have several remote Frontends

OK, so we will need to get that set up later.

>2) Mythfrontend is unable to find the exact font it wants (Droid Sans)
>and is making do by loading an alternative font (DejaVu Sans).  This
>means that some of the screen text may not look as good as it should.
>It is a very minor problem.
>
>    At this point more important to get Backend-3 working, communicating
>    with the Frontends. Nice font is later.

See what the output of these two commands is:

fc-list | grep -i droid
locate DroidSans.ttf

That should tell us if you have the correct fonts on your system and
whether they are installed.  If you do not have them, I can make them
available for download.  I am not sure where I got them from, since it
was a couple of years ago now.  They probably should be packaged with
MythTV somewhere, but if they are, they do not get installed properly.

[snip]
>    Slightly different but I think is OK:
>
>    root at Backend-3:/etc/systemd/system# systemctl status
>    local-network-pingable.service
>
>    ? local-network-pingable.service - Wait for the local network to be
>    pingable
>
>    Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/local-network-pingable.service;
>    enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
>
>    Active: inactive (dead) since Mon 2019-05-27 11:55:24 CDT; 3min 1s ago
>
>    Process: 3111 ExecStart=/bin/true (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
>
>    Process: 3110 ExecStartPre=/bin/bash -c
>    /usr/local/bin/wait-until-pingable.py 192.168.0.1 30 (code=exited,
>    status=0/SUCCESS)
>
>    Main PID: 3111 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
>
>
>    May 27 11:55:24 Backend-3 systemd[1]: Starting Wait for the local
>    network to be pingable...
>
>    May 27 11:55:24 Backend-3 /wait-until-pingable.py[3110]: Starting
>
>    May 27 11:55:24 Backend-3 /wait-until-pingable.py[3110]: ping of
>    192.168.0.1 succeeded
>
>    May 27 11:55:24 Backend-3 /wait-until-pingable.py[3110]: Exiting
>
>    May 27 11:55:24 Backend-3 systemd[1]: Started Wait for the local
>    network to be pingable.
>
>    root at Backend-3:/etc/systemd/system#

That is all good.

[snip]
>Now when you reboot, mythbackend will only be started once the
>Ethernet interface is up and the address specified has responded to a
>ping, or after a long timeout if the ping fails.  That ensures that
>the 192.168.0.3 address is up and working before mythbackend is
>started, so mythbackend can bind it and be available for connections
>from frontends on other PCs.
>
>    OK: *sudo shutdown -r now*

Slightly quicker command, and better as it aliases directly to
systemctl, where "shutdown" is a separate command that has to call
systemctl:

sudo reboot

And there is also:

sudo poweroff

(also aliased to systemctl) when you want that.

>    Ah! *mythfrontend* goes to a usable frontend set of menus! <cartwheels>

Excellent!

>    Now the thing is do I need to change the 127.0.0.1 on the Backend to
>    192.168.0.3, or will a Frontend see Backend-3 by directing to
>    192.168.0.3? (Don’t have an available FE right now.)

Yes, you now need to use mythtv-setup to change the master backend IP
address to 192.168.0.3 if it is still on 127.0.0.1.  Now that the fix
for booting after the network is up is in place, that should work
properly.

>    Can the media (guess the database, though not sure if that means the
>    ‘record this’ instructions’ or also the actual shows) be copied over
>    to the new system (BE2 ? BE3). The old Backend is 0.28 and the new
>    is 30. If a hassle isn’t a problem to use two systems like we have
>    been. I’d rather not tempt fate!

Yes, you can move the database across to BE3.  If you want to shut
down BE2 permanently, then that is probably the easiest thing to do -
just do a backup of the BE2 database, copy the backup file to BE3, and
then restore the database on BE3 using the hostname change options of
the restore program to change all the hostname bits in the backup to
BE3.  Then when MythTV is started again, it will see an old database
schema and will upgrade it automatically to v30.  You need to copy or
move all the recording files across (maybe just move the recording
drives of BE2 into the BE3 PC?).  Doing it this way keeps all the
information about old recordings and all your recording rules.
However, if the tuners are different in BE3, you will need to set them
all up again, as the BE2 database will be set up for BE2's tuners. And
you will need to make sure the tuner setup you do matches what BE2 had
so that the recording rules still work.  All of that is a very viable
thing to do, but it really depends on what you want out of BE3. Since
keeping all the recording history is very important to me, this is the
path I would be choosing.

Alternatively, if you just want to move the recordings across, I have
software that can do that (mythexport and mythimport).  But doing it
for a large number of recordings could be pretty tedious.  And as I
have not yet upgraded to v30 (which I hope to do this week), I have
not tested mythexport and mythimport with v30 yet.  I would also need
to check that exporting from v28 to v30 was OK - the database entries
for the recording tables would need to match.  I believe v28 to v29 is
OK, and I have not heard of anything in v30 that would be
problematical, but until I have v30 running I can not be sure.  If
necessary I can probably do a modified version of mythexport that
would do a full export of all recordings, which would get rid of the
tedious bits.

[snip]

Since I wrote the above yesterday, I have been able to do my v30
upgrade.  So in the next couple of days I should be able to test (and
if necessary fix) my mythexport and mythimport software.