Some Background...
My Mythbuntu 8.10 recently started running really hot...by this I mean the mythfrontend.real process. There are 2 cores on my processor and this process was taking more than 50% of each of cores. This lead to processes like commercial flagging taking days complete where previously, it would take an hour. I was routinely killing the frontend process and restarting it only after commflagging was complete. I thought it was maybe time to do a fresh install.
First things first...
Backup, backup, backup. I can't stress this enough. Your database is the most important component of our mythtv setup...take care of it. When MythTV 0.22 finally ships, it will include a new script-based database backup and restore. See http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Database_Backup_and_Restore for further information. This script allows you to do a partial restore of just your recordings, recording history, etc. This allows you do a fresh install with all the latest updates and still retain your history.
Be sure to also backup any customizations: mplayer config, xine config, etc. Anything you deem important.
On to the install...
First off, the from bootup to reboot took all of 8 minutes. However, leading up to those 8 minutes, took some time. Apparently, the nv open source nvidia driver cannot display on my HDTV once it is finally booted. I tested this with an Ubuntu 9.04 live cd and the LinHES R6 release candidate and all three had the same result. I ended up having to use an old monitor I had laying around. No big deal, but wish I would have known that before hand
As I said, the install took 8 minutes and went smoothly. I did notice one other issue with the nv driver in XFCE. The panel would not display. Neither would the Network Manager applet. Once I enabled the NVidia driver, all this went away.
Setting up all my other customizations and loading all my data was straight forward as well. I store all my music, photos, and videos on my server, so I mount the share and make symbolic links to the respective directories and my existing data is loaded. I setup my three tuners. The Haupauge PVR 150 and Firewire were a snap. The pcHDTV 5500 takes a bit longer, but still not that bad. However, I wouldn't ask a novice to try one of those cards out. Once the cards were setup, I could resinstall my recording history via the restore script mentioned above. To do this, I first stop the mythbackend, run the script, and start the backend back up. This way, the backend will reassign all the future recordings. The process is really easy and you can keep all your history.
Post install thoughts...
When I was finished, I was surprised to find that the mythfrontend.real were still running hot. I am actually looking at it right now in top and the process is jumping between 65% and 93% on one core...and I am not even watching the box. I am not really sure why this is happening and will require some further investigation.
All in all, the process was pretty easy. It took me about a half a day to complete it...but that was due to to a toddler and an infant requiring some attention while also trying to do the install.
I look forward to any thoughts or issues you may have run into with a similar setup.
Dan