upgrade or fresh installation?

[avajon]

hi,

i use LMCE 0704 in my home and want to upgrade to the new version. The question is: should i upgrade my installation or should i buy a new HDD an install it there? I am afraid of loosing all the data and configuration on my current system when i do an upgrade but i also don't want to buy a new HDD an do all the configuration stuff again.

Has anyone tried to upgrade? And did it work?

thanks
avajon

[rnmixon]

This is pretty general advice, but considering they just released the first official beta of 710 an hour or so ago - spending a few bucks on even a new small hard drive is probably well worth it. You can clone/ghost the old hard drive to the new if you want to try the upgrade route without hosing your working system.  I'm doing a fresh install.

There are discussions on this forum from some that have tried upgrades of the unofficial beta that was released a couple of weeks ago. I think it all depends on what equipment you had and what feature you were using. If you give some more specifics about your system and what you feature you tend to use the most (lighting, security, etc) someone might be able to give more guidance.

[totallymaxed]

hi,

i use LMCE 0704 in my home and want to upgrade to the new version. The question is: should i upgrade my installation or should i buy a new HDD an install it there? I am afraid of loosing all the data and configuration on my current system when i do an upgrade but i also don't want to buy a new HDD an do all the configuration stuff again.

Has anyone tried to upgrade? And did it work?

thanks
avajon

A lot of testing of the LinuxMCE0-0710 daily builds and therefore of the Beta3 release has been focussed on the upgrade process from 0704 -> 0710. I have personally tested this numerous times. However this is a Beta release and therefore it probably will have bugs and therefore it may not do exactly as you expect it too. So my strong advice is to backup that 0704 drive and then... and only then... attempt an upgrade.

Also keep in mind it is not guaranteed that there will be a clean upgrade path from this Beta to the full release... there probably will be... but its not a certainty.

[headroom27]

Please, is there some way to upgrade from beta 2 to beta 3 , or i must make a fresh installation of beta 3 ?
sorry my english

[totallymaxed]

Please, is there some way to upgrade from beta 2 to beta 3 , or i must make a fresh installation of beta 3 ?
sorry my english

you can try it... but I can't promise it will be successful! The DVD should detect the previous installation and will retain the setup and config of  the previous install in terms of the MD's and other devices you had configured... media etc ripped to /home/public/data will nor be reatined though... so back that up first. Also remember that as with any DVD install of LinuxMCE the whole physical drive you install to will get wiped... so make sure you understand that before installing!

[posterberg]

I am wondering about the disks were I keep all my media... Are thumbnails for movies etc stored on the media disks or in the database on the "system". Will such settings get lost in a fresh install?

I want to do a fresh install but it would totally suck if media has to be recategorized, remake thumbnails and so on when the media is like 2 TB... It gets quite annoying if all that has to be remade after a fresh install, and I guess that this isn't the last time a new version is released...

I do luckily not have all that work done in my current install but I guess that will happen in my 7.10 setup and I want to prepare such things already for the next release.

My current media is more of a flat file structure that has been used in my previous plain MythTV/XBMC system. But I am am planning for having a total LMCE system now and yeah, you see my point... Just re-installing the the system isn't that tedious but rebuilding the media would be...

[1audio]

1) The upgrade may work, but if it doesn't you are screwed. Get a new disk and clone your drive to experiment. The restore may work but I have not yet been successful with it either.
2) If your content is on a separate drive LMCE can find and use it. I would do the organization of it like LMCE (Audio Video etc.) but LMCE seems to be pretty tolerant and will find everything available on the drive if you let it. That can be a blessing or a curse, depending on what is on that drive and what you are OK with appearing on the video menu.

[posterberg]

Haha, I am ok with anything appearing on the video menu =)

But you know... A _lot_ of videos needs organization, which currently is the directory structure. Filters needs to be created, since LMCE organizes everything in one view,  to restructure, that can be quite tedious...

Music is better... It is somewhat structured by default...

And then the thumbnails...

[nite_man]

I installed Beta 3 (AMD64) over Beta 2 (32bit) and all my settings and media content were saved. I used DVD installation and just answered 'Yes' on the question about saving preferences. So, the update is working fine (at least for beta 2 and DVD installation).

[posterberg]

Thank you!

[nite_man]

Thank you!

In any case, it'll be better to make a backup of all important data, including database backup, media content etc.

[posterberg]

Thank you!

In any case, it'll be better to make a backup of all important data, including database backup, media content etc.

I am not worried about my media getting overwritten or deleted. I have all that on separate disks, actually a separate machine... I've just not updated myself with how LMCE stores all this info. If it's in the DB, as xml files on each disk or other possible solution.

It makes sense to use the DB since it already exists but that also means that all saved settings gets lost on an update since the most secure update method seem to be re-installation.

Updating the DB and inserting the data again might not be possible after an upgrade. I don't think many end users are aware of if DB structure have changed and so on. I might not be possible to insert the backed up data... It might very well be possible for this update, but what will happen with the next or next again version...

I would guess that I've a few thousand movies in my system, even more music... I've yet not learned how to structure it in LMCE so it is just a mess at the moment. But I would really hate to redo the structuring work in the next upgrade.

I am certain the LMCE provides a efficient way to organize my media, I just need to read and do it. I am just worried about having to redo it at some point... It without doubt a much greater task than just installing KDE and LMCE from bottom. That can be done in an hour or two...