As preparation for the new server I am getting, I am preparing for that by at least getting the software to a more recent baseline. The idea is to first upgrade the software to the more recent versions while still having a 32bit OS. Then a separate step is to go to 64bit on the new server.That step will then be following by running the server in its separate virtual domain. After that, splitting off the mythtv functionality in a separate ‘box’. And then even more stuff (it’s a hobby).
The main problem as usual is the upgrade of mythtv. I have been running a quite old version 0.21 and needed to upgrade to 0.24. Instead of doing this directly on the server however, I used a backup of the server on a separate hard disk and used KVM to upgrade that backup in a separate VM. That was what I did last week and I am happy I did because there were many many issues. I have a list of at least 20 points that I had to solve. Some were quite difficult and caused me hours of searching.
There were really subtle issues with mythtv and mysql requiring it to use /var/run/mysql instead of /var/lib/mysql. Also IPV6 issues where localhost gave a first match of the IPV6 form ::1 with 127.0.0.1 (IPV4) second. That caused problems for php. Then there were PHP settings for date and time. Samba losing all user accounts, viewvc getting uninstalled at the upgrade, and device names changing so smartd drive monitoring no longer worked. There was also a preload package intended to optimize startup of the server but in fact causing very high CPU load preventing server startup. That one caused me quite a head ache. Of course, a first upgrade attempt today failed because the DVD rom I burned was damaged, so instead I installed from NFS (from the laptop).
The good thing is that the upgrade itself was quite relaxed because I knew all of the issues beforehand. Even tested the backup I did on the VM before to verify that my TV card was still recognized. Really happy I tried it out first, and… getting more impressed by KVM.
But… it is done now. Finally.