Using R5C7, it doesn't seem like the backup function works. I select it, and the interface sort of hangs for a minute or so. Then it un-hangs and the computer works as usual.

What is supposed to happen when selecting the backup option?

If your audio is on you should hear two tones. The first one indicates the backup has started, the second one that it has completed. The backup takes about 5 minutes overall. If you'd like to see more detailed progress and diagnostics you can run the backup commands manually. Use Alt-X from the front end to get an X terminal, then run:

See this thread for more details: http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10117 The thread also includes a checking script which was completed too late for inclusion into R5C7. R5D1 incorporates the validation directly in the backup and restore proceses.

BTW - If you're getting ready to upgrade please go read the R5D1 Upgrade Hints here: http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=11293

That's a lot of upgrade tips... It actually looks like reinstalling from scratch will be easier since the major problems I had installing in the first place are probably solved in the new version with the new nidia video and alsa sound drivers. The only other real problem I had was my pvr card acting wonky while setting it up, so as long as I have to remove the card installation and redo that, I may as well just start over.

Thanks

Sigh... I really _hate_ this reaction to detailed documentation. It's part of what makes it such a miserable thankless job.

The upgrade process, with all that stuff, takes well under an hour start to finish. A backup takes ~5 minutes. The Phase 1 install takes ~20 minutes. Phase 2 setup roughly another 10 minutes. Most of that is waiting while the scripts do their work, all but the backup you've got to do anyway as part of the install, and that requires a bunch more manual configuration. Time for the post install stuff depends on what you set up (mine is scripted so it's under 5 minutes). If you do an install from scratch you lose all your media files and work on things like MythTV and X configuration, tuning scripts, ...

The old CompileIvtv procedure on the wiki is nearly as detailed and takes all of about 5-10 minutes. There have been more people who thought it was "really complex" who come back and said "that was so easy!" than I can count.

What do you have to lose by trying it? If you re-install from scratch, you'll lose your shows and settings. The upgrade gives you the new video drivers, and TJC's instructions are very easy and clear.

Don't get me wrong, I normally LIKE detailed instructions like those. They make it possible to do stuff without resorting to trial and error. In my specific case however, I only installed knoppmyth a few days ago so I have done almost zero customization from the base install. The only things I did to the basic install was upgrade video and sound drivers, select the tuner card and inputs, do a channel scan, and select which mixer volume the remote should use. That's it. Well, I did set video=1280x1024 on bootup during the initial install, but thats really it. I don't even have a channel guide setup because I'm on AFN Korea (Armed Forces Network) and I don't think there is a channel guide available.

With the new version, the video and sound drivers are already upgraded, so that leaves only tuner card setup and one sound setting. With the upgrade, I'll have to re-do the tuner card setup anyhow so by doing a complete re-install I actually save myself a little effort

Honestly, I haven't recorded a single program and haven't done any customization at all. And if I somehow mess up a new install, I can still start over and lose only 10-20 min. I know, because last week I re-installed R5C7 4 times in under 2 hours

I'll do the upgrade process if it will help anything or anybody, but honestly I'm a bit curious to see if this latest release will work "out of the box" on my system since it addresses my 2 main problems with R5C7, video and sound drivers. It's not like windows where it takes 2-3 hours just to get it up and running... Even with all my thrashing last time I still probably got it working in about the same time it takes to get winXP installed and patched.

But if you really want me to try the upgrade process, I'll do it just for you

I forgot to mention, I measured it and the time between backup "bling" sounds is about 20 seconds... The hardware I used for this buildup was originally intended for a bloatware winxp install so it's pretty much overkill. A64 3700, 1 gig ram, 300 gig HD, etc.

I have replaced most of those "What's it doing? Did it freeze? Did it have an error?" menu items such as mythfilldatabase and mythbackup with "xterm -e <cmd>" rather then executing the command directly in the xml menu files.

This way an xterm is popped up with the results, answering those questions.

And yes, documentation is a thankless job. Thanks tjc!

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ASUS AT3N7A-I (Atom 330)
TBS 8922 PCI (DVB-S2)

Yeah, the 5 minutes thing is when you've got old backups for it to roll over. The bzip2 compression used saves you about 20% in space but takes 20-30 times as long as gzip would.

Sorry, knee jerk reaction at this point. My ex-boss was a d******d, think Lumberg from "Office Space" only much worse. First he would complain that our documented procedures (which he had never actually followed himself) were too complex, then he would complain that we were "wasting time" when we tried to make them more automated, then he would complain that the directions weren't detailed enough, and around and around it went.

BTW - The folks who actually used the procedures liked them just fine. One of the junior guys even came up with the "so simple that even a drunken monkey could follow them" bit after coming home from an evening out to an "emergency" voice mail message. I used to call it "4AM proof" myself, for stuff you could get right when someone paged you before 0-dark-30.

Hi tjc,

Wow! Haven't heard that in years

Mike

I tried to backup my box last night in prep for upgrading R5D1 to 0.20 over the wknd. However, the backup failed. I'm gonna try running it in a term window tonight, but is there anything else I should look at?

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KM R5E50; K8NGM2; A64-3800+; 1024MB PC3200; LG DVD-RW; Seagate 750GB; 6600 PCI-E; Onboard sound; Hauppauge PVR-150

That should get the details. One of the most common causes of this is either other activity on the system or enabling "log to the DB" which writes MythTV status messages to a table called "mythlog". The record count in this table is prone to go up during the backup, at a guess because the frontend is complaining about not being able to contact the backend... We shutdown the backend during the DB dump to avoid exactly this kind of "inconsistent state problem" so having the frontend scribbling on the DB is really annoying.

I got the following when I ran the backup.

Warning, the table lists not identical.

Backup is bad or out of date.

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KM R5E50; K8NGM2; A64-3800+; 1024MB PC3200; LG DVD-RW; Seagate 750GB; 6600 PCI-E; Onboard sound; Hauppauge PVR-150

Details? Which table(s) did it complain about? You should have see diff output listing one or more tables with different record counts. I even told you exactly which table to look for:

Did you see something that looked like this?