Backups

muzicman0 · 2026-01-07, 10:32 PM

On Ubuntu, I have hosed my OS installation somehow. If I back up /var/opt/nextpvr/config.xml and /var/opt/nextpvr/npvr.db3 (I still have access via command line). And restore those files after reinstalling Ubuntu, will that restore everything, and if not, what would it not restore?

mvallevand · 2026-01-07, 10:55 PM

Backing up and restoring all of /var/opt/nextpvr is preferred but for an HDHR those two files would probably be an ok minimum. For digital tuners and extras you want all the files in the root of /var/opt/nextpvr

Under that /var/opt/nextpvr you might want

media/channels for your channel icons
media/shows would be your recording art but often that folder is also full of lots of junk art too.
thumbs/ is filled with junk if you use UI clients so it can be ignored
scripts/ if you have any custom scripts in there.

Also you need to remake your recording folder(s) and the live tv buffer location and permissions to match config.xml.

Martin

muzicman0 · 2026-01-07, 11:02 PM

Perfect. Thanks.

mvallevand · 2026-01-07, 11:20 PM

Also when you restore make sure they are user nextpvr and not root.

Martin

muzicman0 · 2026-01-08, 12:12 AM

thanks, I grabbed a ls -lh to see all the permissions, so I should be good to go.

There are so many things I will have to re-set up, I am trying to make them all easy! (SMB, Channels DVR, NextPVR, Docker, soooooo many. sigh)

muzicman0 · 2026-01-11, 06:45 PM

I was going to come back and report on success or failure of the backup/restore, however, I was able to restore the OS to a working state, so while I did back everything up, I did not actually perform a restore.

Still thinking about doing it though because I want to set this up as a Proxmox VM (maybe with GPU pass through - but honestly, I only use it to record, not watch). It will make historical backups much easier.

muzicman0 · 2 hours ago

So it appears that I had a failing HDD. I kinda expected that would be the case, but I put it off too long, and finally had to start from scratch this morning. The backups I took worked fine. mostly at least.

I am having a small problem where channels from my HDHomeRun won't play back in a browser window (but record fine, and play back on my Android TV devices). Not a big deal as that is not my use case, but h.264 files from my IPTV solution play back fine, so it almost has to be something with MPEG2 streams, or possibly interlaced video I suppose.

I did go the VM route, but passed a GPU through. Seems to be working ok.

I did discover what I think might be a bug, but I will post that in a different thread. could be user error as well.