Upgrading MythTV to Mythbuntu 12.04 64-bit

As described in the previous post, the time had come to upgrade my MythTV installation. It had been installed using Mythbuntu 10.10, 32-bit. I wanted to move to the most recent version, currently Mythbuntu 12.04. There were two options available to me: upgrading the current installation, or a new install of the latest version, and copying the previous MythTV database over to it. The first option was not too appealing. Doing a distribution upgrade is a fingers-crossed, hope-this-works process a good part of the time - although I have had pretty good fortune with it on my desktop PC. If I were to go this route, I couldn't just upgrade from 10.10 -> 12.04. It would have to be 10.10 -> 11.04 -> 11.10 -> 12.04. Three complete system upgrades in succession, which would likely leave a lot of cruft left over in the installation. Lots of points of failure. The final nail in the coffin was that I wanted to move to a 64-bit installation, to take advantage of the full 4GB of memory that was installed in the system.

So a clean install it was. To prepare, I copied a number of setup files to a safe place that wouldn't be overwritten during the install. Files like:

• mdadm.conf, from /etc/mdadm, which had the RAID configuration information. 
• xorg.conf, from /etc/X11, which had the custom modeline used to output to my (now ancient) CRT TV. 
• ssmtp.conf, from /etc/ssmtp, for email notification in the case of errors.
• apcupsd.conf, from /etc/apcupsd, the setup of the APC UPS monitoring software.
• hardware.conf, from /etc/lirc, used by LIRC to set up the Media Centre remote control.
• the MythTV database password, from /etc/mythtv/config.xml

Not all the files would end up being needed, but I felt safer having them handy, just in case.

The installation process started from a USB stick loaded with the Mythbuntu 12.04 installer, since I don't have an optical drive in it. No room, with three drives already there. I also hooked up a monitor instead of a TV, because that needs extra setup to output to a component connection.

Since there was some left over free space on the SSD, I installed to that, leaving the 10.10 install intact for now. It went remarkably smoothly. One thing I noted was that at the beginning, there is an option to update the installer. I clicked that, and the system seemed to do nothing for quite a while. Opening up a terminal window and running "top" showed that it was in fact doing something, so I waited until it finished. Once done, the installation process could begin. It would have been nice for it to have some sort of indication that it was doing something, though.

Partway through the process, it prompted for what sort of remote control is being used. I selected "Windows Media Center remote", and the thing was set up automatically. Brilliant! Didn't need that LIRC setup file listed above.

To get the system outputting to my TV properly, I just copied the old xorg.conf file to the /etc/X11 directory (I renamed the existing file, in case I needed it again) and rebooted with a sense of hope and anxiety. A minute or so later, the screen came to life! It worked!

The big one, that I was dreading, was getting the RAID array to be seen by the new install. I still consider myself quite the mdadm novice, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that the RAID array was picked up by the new install quite easily - after installing mdadm and lvm2. This command:

sudo mdadm --assemble --scan

was all that was needed for it to scan for any drives, re-assemble the array, and write a new mdadm.conf file. Easy!

Next was seeing if LVM could find the volumes created. Running

sudo lvm pvscan
sudo lvm vgscan
sudo lvm lvscan

detected all the physical volumes, volume groups, and logical volumes, respectively. Mounting the logical volume that held the recordings was successful - I could see them all. Adding the device entry to /etc/fstab seemed to work, eventually. On the first reboot it came up with an error message, mentioning there were serious problems with the mount. Not sure what it was, but a reboot afterwards seemed to make it happy. I had installed xfsprogs, to manage and defragment XFS filesystems; maybe that helped.

Going through some of the MythTV screens brought up some error messages that it couldn't write to the drive - it turned out to be a permissions issue for the files and directories on the array. Entering

sudo chown -R mythtv:mythtv /var/lib/mythtv

changed the ownership back to the mythtv user, and it seemed happy again.

Bringing the previous database over was a painless process as well. I followed the instructions here and here and the new database came over without drama.

So far it all looks good. I may have a tweak of the VDPAU settings to see if playback can be improved any - it looks fine, but the settings have just been carried over from the previous 0.23 version. Things may have changed in the current 0.25 release.

Now that the system is updated to 12.04, which is a Long Term Support (LTS) release of Ubuntu, I won't be caught out with an obsolete version after 18 months like I was with 10.10.

As a side note, one of the main reasons for moving to 64-bit was because the Zotac IONITX-A-U motherboard, with an Atom 330, was only showing 3GB of RAM installed, even though I had two, 2GB sticks in there. I thought this was a 32 bit software issue. After installing the 64-bit OS, the free memory remained the same. Even in the BIOS, it only reported 3072MB. Strange. A bit of searching around revealed this thread on Zotac's supprt forums. As it turns out, if 4GB is installed, 512MB is reserved for system use, and then there is the amount used by the onboard Nvidia ION graphics - which I had set to the maximum allowed 512MB. So only 3GB visible. It's OK, it still runs fine, but it would have been nice to be able to use a little extra.

Upgrade to Maverick Meerkat - version 10.10 worked!

I am writing this from my newly-upgraded Ubuntu 10.10 system! This has been the second time I upgraded the installation, rather than start afresh. I was a little nervous, to be honest, but backups were made before the upgrade so there was an escape plan.

There were only a few issues that were pretty easily fixed, and I may, just may, have fixed the hanging on boot problem I had with version 10.04.

One problem I had was the Hard drive temperature reporting in Conky - it stopped displaying a temperature. This was because the hddtemp command could only be run as root - Conky doesn't run with those privileges, and I didn't want to start doing so. A quick search revealed a single line command to allow hddtemp to be run as a regular user:

sudo chmod u+s /usr/sbin/hddtemp

After doing that, the disk temperature re-appeared and all was good.

Fixing the boot screen

This was a problem that I had in the previous version, 10.04, as well as in 10.10. It is to do with running the Nvidia proprietary drivers, and switching to different video modes. Basically, there are some steps to try at this site, which I did. It involves setting some video modes in the boot loader. I initially tried 1680x1050 (about the best that was supported by my card, even though it runs at 1920x1080 once at the desktop) and got a comically large ubuntu logo during boot. A later change to 1280x1024 yielded a much better result.

So far, the boot and shutdown screens look much better, and I haven't yet had it hang on me. I am hesitant to call it truly fixed until a few more weeks have passed.

Edit January 7, 2011: If you do these changes and then switch back to the open source driver (nouveau), you have to undo the changes to be able to set the proper resolution for your screen(s).

My list of tweaks - what I change and add after a fresh install

With the release of version 10.10 in a few days, this post partly serves as a reminder to myself what I have installed on my machine, and how it is set up. It will probably also make pause and reconsider doing a clean installation, when I look at the amount of configuration I would have ahead of me!

Programs not in Ubuntu repositories:

Crashplan - for backing up user data such as documents, music, photos. Not so much for system data - I use backintime for that.

Dropbox - for syncing some of my data between computers - e.g. between home and work PC.

A whole bunch of Google programs - Google Earth, Chrome, Picasa and Desktop. They probably now know more about me than I do...

conkyforecast - a part of Conky that supplies weather forecast info on the desktop, along with a bunch of other system stats that allow me to keep tabs on what's happening on the PC. One of the programs I consider essential. Working without it is like driving a car with no dashboard.

Photography/Image editing:

Flickr Uploader - I initially downloaded this because I stopped using F-Spot, as it was too damn buggy. When I was trying other programs, none of them had a way to upload photos to my flickr account. This utility is pretty handy, letting you tag photos individually or as a group.

DigiKam - I thought for a while before installing this, as it is a KDE program. Choosing to install this requires also installing a bunch of the KDE framework. If you are interested in keepiing a lean system, maybe this isn't for you. However, I was looking at some sort of photo management and editing software. Bibble and Adobe Lightroom are the main contenders. Bibble is a paid app, as is Lightroom, which has the downside of being Mac and Windows only. I thought, what the hell, digiKam is free, so I'll try this one first. So far, it has worked pretty well. It isn't quite as polished as the other two, but my wallet says it is just fine.

Music:

Rubyripper - an open-source equivalent of Exact Audio Copy for windows.

Other:

Bleachbit - does a similar job to what CCleaner does in Windows.

Virtualbox - for running virtual machines, testing other operating system installs. Good to tinker and learn things.

Deluge Bittorrent client. I prefer it to Transmission (which is installed by default).

HDParm: a later version, which includes a copy of the wiper script that performs garbage collection on solid state hard drives, marking sectors as deleted. The new version of Ubuntu should have this included by default (as well as the 2.6.35 kernel, that supports the TRIM command).

Tweaks:

Since I have a solid state hard drive in my system (and I highly recommend them for anyone looking to upgrade their PC) there are a few SSD-specific tweaks you can do to get the best out of them. This site has an excellent guide. I didn't do all of them, just enabled the noop disk scheduler and mounted filesystems with the noatime flag.

There are a number of things to be done with regards to MythTV, one of which is setting up LIRC for the remote control to work. One thing I noticed with a bit of early tinkering with a later kernel was that the remote ceased to work with that kernel - that's a concern I have with moving to the new version.

Enabling the medibuntu repositories to allow MP3 playback, DVDs and a few other restricted formats. Version 10.10 apparently has an option to enable all of these at install time, which is welcome.

That's just a few things I've changed, no doubt I'll think of many more, especially if I do a reinstall from scratch. I'll let you know how I go: if I do an upgrade (quick, convenient, chance of hosing the system), fresh install (time consuming with all the re-configuring and reinstalling, but will be a nice fresh system), or staying with 10.04 (quickest of all, but missing out on new toys). I might hold out for a little while, but I'm sure I'll succumb to the allure of new and shiny...

Most painless Ubuntu upgrade ever

Wow. That's all I can say. Today I decided to upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04, but rather than doing a clean install like I have done with previous versions, I thought I'd have a go at the upgrade. To prepare, I copied the /boot, root and /home partitions of the existing 9.10 install to some free space on another hard drive. Just as a precaution in case it all went pear-shaped. I ran the update manager, chose the upgrade option, and away it went - downloading all the new packages, applying the updates. Only a couple of dialog boxes popped up asking about Grub, and what it should do with it.

The process finished without incident, I rebooted, and surprisingly, it started, allowed me to log in, and it got to the desktop! All previous programs and settings there, all programs updated. I am pleasantly surprised - even MythTV updated without a hitch, for the first time. I'm sure there will be the odd hiccup along the way that I'll discover in time, but so far so good.

Oh yes, regarding Windows 7 - I've removed it from my machine. Partly because I was barely using it, apart from watching full-screen Flash videos in decent quality, partly because I have obtained an old laptop from work, and installed 7 on that.

(Originally posted on May 2, 2010 on my other blog)