This is simply a place to vent my frustrations at my recent installation conundrum, this is not directed at anyone in particular so please no one take offence. I will raise bugs for issues I found during my installation process to ensure some of the things that I encountered won't occur in the future.

[rant]I was having some issues with recordings not always working properly, with the recordings being blocking and stuff. I had done some troubleshooting but could not track down the issue. Anyway so I decided as I was still on version 7.2 I would upgrade to version 8 and see if that helps the issue.

First issue I had was my hardware was playing up in that the system had been running fine, but would now would not boot reliably. I did at one stage get it to boot and was able to run through the installer. First issue I encountered was my remote was detected but the path to the files was wrong AGAIN. This has been an issue since early version 7 so I wasn't in a good place to start.

Anyway I used my wireless keyboard to go through the rest of the installer and use the same process that has worked for the previous couple of verisons by simply going through and selecting upgrade, the installer ended up finishing after some time and the computer rebooted, however it would not boot properly. It would get past the grub screen, you would see the LinHES splash screen but then it would simply reboot.

It wasn't until after this did I find out that you can't upgrade directly from version 7 to version 8 and that you would have to install from scratch. By this time after fart arsing around, the computer ended up dieing with video errors (the mainboard has onboard video, which I don't use, but alas I can't get the mainboard to boot.) Futunately I had recently upgrade my Wife/Daughter's computer thus I had a spare mainboard laying around and I was able to slot that in, installed a new HDD, to replace the aging IDE drive and I was able to install R8.

I then reconnected my two (2) storage 2TB drives and ran the command add_storage.py -no_destruction I went through the hops and at the end of process it says it will Format the drives. I re-read the webpage about this script and it says that But alas my drives were formatted and I have had to go and recopy all of my data back across.
{/rant]

At least now I have a working R8 system and I found that the problem in the end with the recordings was my old HDHomeRun is on its way to the baseball diamond in the sky.

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Girkers

Not for sure how the formatting on the wiki got changed, but using --no_destruction is the correct flag. The original doc had it shown as two dashes but somehow the wiki showed it as one hyphen. Anyway the wiki has been updated so that it shows two dashes. The program itself will warn when it's going to erase the drives vs just add them, but perhaps it gets lost in the initial wall of text.

Thanks for fixing the wiki, but I only had a single dash thus the reason for the destruction. They way I read the wiki to me was ambiguious so I appreciate your effort in clearing it up.

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Girkers

I was thinking about biting the bullet and upgrading my system from the ancient version (6.04?) it's been running for ages to the current release (7.4? 8.0?) today, but this is a bit chilling.

Back in the day when I knew the install and revert process inside and out, trying a new release or beta was just a matter of making sure the image backup was current and having an hour to spare, but at the moment I'm feeling a lot of empathy with the folks that were nervous about it.

Wasn't the switch to arch and pacman supposed to get us out of the "wipe the partition and copy over a new image" world?

Here's my experience yesterday going from 7.4 to R8

I wiped out my Bedroom Front End and installed R8. System is Zotac Nvidia Atom based with SSD and HDMI connection to 32" LED TV. I tried this PC, because it is a limited test and going from 32bit to 64bit is a huge change all new packages = no upgrade. The install worked properly albeit no sound. Since it works with HDMI video it seems inconsistent that HDMI sound isn't accounted for correctly. To fix it I checked Linhes audio and it suggested the fix was in Myth audio so I made an adjustment there for HDMI sound and it works. Installed the XBMC 64bit package. One of the reasons that I want to upgrade is performance during NBA games. I tested it out no tearing during fast motion, perfect and XMBC graphics seem quicker. My remote is the Firefly and it detects properly but some of the important buttons are missing, so I opened a ticket. Not having the OK button UGH! Moreover, it is detected my remote in both myth and xbmc without adjustment for the first time! Another change is storage groups for video. Created it then it only needs to be scanned for Metadata once (not ten times) on the Master BE/FE and then the Dedicated Front End get the info automatically is excellent.

So to be clear the reason for the wipe and install is because LinHES is finally 64bit! Almost 9 years after buying my first 64 bit AMD thinking that XP Service Pack 2 would include support for 64 bit when it finally came out (boy was I wrong).
I've never had great luck installing upgrades over working systems. I doubt that everything in 32 bit would work in 64 bit mode.

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My System

From my understanding the installation was always wipe and reload, it simply did a backup first and restore db. I couldn't think going to 8 was any different, but obviously there is and I have no doubt the developers had a very valid reason for it.

Thanks for sharing your installation, please make sure you do bug reports for issues you had during installation.

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Girkers

R8 has a different partition layout, which I'm guessing is why it cant be upgraded the old way.

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Paul Turpie
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<--Is your location in your profile? Why not?

Yes I can see how the partition layout could be different, but the mythtv application uses a database and the files, as long you back up the mythtv files and the database gets backed up, why could these not be restored? I don't store my media on the boot drive so from what your saying the installer seems shortsighted.

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Girkers