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| Notes and suggestions for the KnoppMyth installation/upgrade http://forum.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10033 |
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| Author: | ashtonp [ Sun May 14, 2006 12:03 am ] |
| Post subject: | Notes and suggestions for the KnoppMyth installation/upgrade |
Last weekend I finally completed my upgrade from R5A26 to R5B7, and I am really impressed with this new package. Great job, Cecil and team! However, because I have a somewhat non-standard system configuration, I had to do several customizations to make the upgrade work on my setup. During the process, I learned a lot, and got some ideas that I'd like to pass on as suggestions. I hope that maybe some of these thoughts may be useful. Observations / Comments: 1.A KnoppMyth “upgrade” actually consists of a complete “platform replacement”, followed by a data migration. A backout option (“undo”) isn't available yet. 2.Knoppix is a pretty good base to build upon, but it changes. Case in point: In KnoppMyth R4, the mythtv user:group was 101:101. But these numbers have been taken over by other facilities in R5 (pdnsd and crontab), moving mythtv to 105:105. This may cause access problems with mythtv files, such as NFS mounts. 3.The original 4-partition configuration needs to be updated: Due to changes in MythTV v0.19, the /cache partition has become obsolete. 4.The /myth partition, which was originally intended to store release-independent “persistent” files (i.e., backups, tv recordings, music files, videos, gallery, games) has also become the home for applications that architecturally don't belong there such as avimanager, mythburn, and nuv2disc. (These are applications, and should be in a directory tied to the installed “platform”.) Suggestions: 1.Since all standard KnoppMyth installations up to and including R5B7 include the now obsolete “/cache” partition, we can turn this space over for other purposes. It is about (2G + hda_size / 5). 2.Rather than re-install an upgraded KnoppMyth “platform” over the previous installation (with a reformat in-between), it would be safer to install the upgrade onto a separate partition, keeping the existing installation in case problems are encountered. This would need 2 different partitions to be pre-allocated: one for the original platform installation, and another for the upgraded platform. (Hmm... the “/cache” partition is now available...) 3.The mythtv user:group should be set to a safe value that will be valid for all future releases. Perhaps 200:200 ? 4.The /myth directory should be tidied up, and version-dependent applications should be migrated elsewhere (such as /usr/share/mythtv/, or /usr/local/bin/, or even /opt). This should be easy for mythburn, which now has its mythburn.conf file, but I'm not as familiar with the others. Proposal: 1.Migrate the KnoppMyth architecture to include the following partitions: /dev/hda1: slash1 (becomes “/” for configuration 1) /dev/hda2: swap (unchanged) /dev/hda3: slash2 (previously was /cache) (“/” for configuration 2) /dev/hda4: /myth (static repository for backup, TV, Video, Music, etc.) 2.The lilo (or grub) boot manager should be set up to allow either /dev/hda1 or /dev/hda3 to be selected as the root partition (“/”). 3.Prior to an upgrade, /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda3 could be sync'ed, except for one file: /etc/fstab. The upgrade could then be applied to /dev/hda1, including reformatting the partition and installing the new version. If there are problems, the user can simply reboot, and select /dev/hda3 (still containing the original image) to be the root partition. 4.The two “mirrored” partitions can be maintained as both an upgrade-mechanism and a fault-recovery-mechanism if the “Backup KnoppMyth” tool is used regularly: If a problem occurs on the running system, reboot and select the alternate partition, then run “Restore KnoppMyth”. 5.The “mythtv” user:group changes can be done with scripts, but would be most effective if run pre-upgrade, and will be different for R4 and R5. I can provide some help here, based upon what I did when re-mastering my installation disc. I'll stop there, and ask for feedback: is there any interest in following up on these suggestions? BTW, I have a similar dual-boot setup now running on my MythTV. Cheers, Ken (ashtonp) |
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