I auto-upgraded my master backend (a Chaintech 7NIF2 with Athlon 2400+ and a couple of LVM drives, with PVR250, PVR350, and HD3000 tuner cards) from R5A16 to R5B7 this weekend. In general it went quite smoothly; the extra scripts for configuring things like the remote and bootsplash and restoring LVM were a big help, and the scripts to add mythstreamTV worked great too.

Most of the problems I ran into are addressed in tjc's "before you upgrade" thread.

Here are others not addressed in that thread:

* Initial attempt at auto-upgrading failed with errors at the end of install and a freeze on reboot. I tried again with the same disk and everything worked fine.

* When I was asked to identify which Hauppauge remote I had, two of the options were "gray" and "silver." My remote could be called either of those colors depending on the lighting. If there was some other way to draw the distinction between those two remotes it might remove confusion.

* After post-installation configuration, I ran mythtv-setup and saw that I had no capture cards configured. I reconfigured my three cards, and got back most of my scheduled recordings.

* I have some problems with my digital OTA listings that I have described in a separate thread in the DTV section.

* Configuring MythFlix (the NetFlix queue viewer/manager) is not done via the frontend anywhere... you have to do it via the command line.

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I also set up another computer (five-year-old Athlon 750 MHz) from scratch as a remote frontend. Again, very smooth with only the following problems:

* Playback of recorded programs on this remote frontend are fine. Playback of Live TV, however, is not: it takes a while to appear and then once it plays back it is filled with stutters and pauses. I rarely use Live TV viewing so this is low priority for me. I know I'll need to launch mythbackend from a terminal and check for error messages to debug this.

* This frontend has an ATI Remote Wonder on it. The previous kernel module had a problem with repeating keys, but now it seems that the problem is the reverse: it's now less responsive than it used to be. I have to press the keys much more slowly. Not sure if this would be true if I picked kernel instead of LIRC, or if this is because it's on a slow machine.

Please go back and look at the Some Hints for upgrading to R5B7 thread again. It covers everything from pre to post install, and includes most of the issues you mentioned here along with some others. I've posted the URL so many times it's starting to feel like I'm a spammer, but since I'm also still encountering people who aren't finding this information or at least not it in time to save themselves a bunch of grief, I don't see much choice.

Also, if you know of missing fixes for common problems with the R5B7 upgrade, please follow up in that thread so we can send people to it for one stop shopping.

Original post edited for redundancy.

I was familiar with your thread and even linked to it but was trying to be descriptive in case one of my steps was the cause of my problems.

I would hope that your thread gets made sticky (edit: I see that it now is), and it might be better categorized as Hints & Tips rather than Usage/HowTo (or maybe posted in both).

i'm having issues upgrading...

I began trying before the recommendations were posted

i wish


was performed automatically prior to but as part of the auto upgrade procedure...

Also, if I want to start fresh at this point can I do an almost clean install without wiping hda4 where my recordings are stored /myth/tv or should i copy them to a new drive.

I think my issues with auto upgrade is related to my master server master backend settings...it is the masterbackend. the database isn't able to be located. and mythtv-setup hangs if i let it sit for too long.

I've taken to calling them cigar shaped grey and dog bone silver. If I haven't gotten confused again...

'Silver' has a label with A415-HPG in the battery compartment.