Migrating to new PC

[NumberFive]

Hello,

I'm migrating my install of 4.2.5 from an old PC to a new one.  All seems to be going well, but wondering if anyone can offer any tips.

What I have done is to copy the recordings from "Old PC" to "New PC", then copied the contents of Public/NPVR/ from the old PC to the new PC.  This seemed to migrate all the recordings okay, but left the channels and devices a bit of a mess.  

I guess the preferred way is that I should have done an "Export Recordings" and "Import Recordings"?


When I deleted all the channels and then readded them, after an EPG update all the recurring recordings seemed to be picked up.  However, some of them went to SD versions of channels rather than their HD equivalents.  How does the NextPVR logic work in this case?  Is it purely by the channel name, or is it by some database ID?


Overall I'm extremely impressed how NextPVR handled the migration, in what I guess is an unconventional way to go about things.  My thinking in copying the whole npvr.db3 over was to keep all my "watched" video files and whatnot too.  Maybe there's a more graceful way I should do this?


My old machine is still live and acting as the main one.  New machine running in parallel.  I can still make changes if anyone has tips?

Thanks

[sub]

You should be fine with copying over the public/NPVR directory (with npvr.db3 etc), but you'll want to make sure the devices and their drivers are already installed in the new machine, and the recordings are in the same path as they were on the old machine.

[NumberFive]

Thanks sub,

I really appreciate the advice, especially since I know V4 is deprecated.  It generally seems to have mitgated very well, just a few little quirks to do with scheduled / recurring recordings. 

The process I followed was:

1) Copy all recordings from PC1 to PC2.
2) Copy /Public/NPVR/ from PC1 to PC2.
3) Open NextPVR on PC2.  Delete all channels, delete the PC1 devices from 'Devices' settings page.
4) Scan for new channels using PC2's tuners.

Generally things seem to be okay, recurring recordings seem to be behaving mostly as I'd expect.  Some oddness is:

a) One show is scheduled to record on an alternative day due to a conflict (not possible, 4 tuners and nothing else recording at the time).  [New: Jamie: Keep Cooking Family]
b) One show failed to record because "Channel not found. Deleted?"  (The channel is still there, but I guess like all the others it was indeed deleted and re-added).  [Shot Caller]  >  This doesn't seem to be in the logs.



Maybe I should have scanned for new channels first, then deleted the legacy tuners?  I can still have another go, as PC1 is still the main machine in service.

[sub]

Are you moving the exact same tuners to the new machine, ie so same devices, and number of tuners are available? If so, then it shouldn't need to move recordings.

[NumberFive]

It's a completely new build, giving me plenty of flexibility to try it while the old machine continues on.

The original PC has a Nova-T dual tuner (PCI) and an unbranded DVB-T2 USB stick (so 2x DVB-T, 1x DVB-T2), and the new one a quadHD (PCI-E) so 4x DVB-T2 tuners.

So it's different tuners, and one more tuner overall.

[sub]

After copying the database over, you'd probably need to go to the Devices screen, and hopefully see your four new tuners listed, and the three old ones marked unavailable. Double click each of the tuners, and it should ask if you'd like to copy the configuration from an existing tuner - accept that option, so that they're the same channels, not new ones. These should be capable of fulfilling your recurring recordings.

If you're still having issue with one channel complaining it doesn't exist - it's likely because it wasn't on all three of your tuners, and the one it chose to copy from didn't include that channel.

[NumberFive]

Sub,

Thank you very much. I've done as you suggested and I'll let it run for a day or two to confirm it's happy, but as I'm sure you imagine everything seems to be working as it should be in the first couple hours.

There was some oddness with the way I did it first, that it would record several shows on a particular channel, and then later the same day miss a recording on that same channel saying the channel wasn't found / deleted. Now that I think through my method, I'm amazed it worked at all and didn't just completely mess up the recurring recordings. You must have well crafted logic behind the scenes for it to have handled my user error as gracefully as it did.

[NumberFive]

Hi sub,

All has been going well until just now when I noticed that the EPG is not updating on the new PC.

It seems under the advanced DVB EPG settings on the "Misc 2" screen that there are no frequencies to be scanned for the EPG.

If I import the database from the old machine, and add the channels to the new tuners, it is okay (all the EPG frequencies appear as expected). But as soon as I delete the now non-existant tuners from the new system, the EPG frequencies are gone. It appears as though the EPG scan frequencies are linked to the defunct tuners.

I'm wondering if you would have any suggestions?

Thanks

[sub]

I think you may have to map the EPG for these stations to none, then back to DVB EPG to force it to use one of these tuners that are present. Otherwise it's probably trying to use the original tuner that was used for scanning, but it's no longer present.

[NumberFive]

Thanks sub!

Yes that works, fantastic.

A random question, I was investigating to see if I could maybe edit the DB to apply the change to all channels.  I've never looked behing the curtain before, and I have to admit I'm cautious as I've only a very basic understanding of how it is structured.  

I did notice that in the 'Channel' table the field "readable_source" disappears?

Before:

Code:

<epg>
  <source>DVB/ATSC EPG</source>
  <capture_source>21</capture_source>
  <readable_source>4544:4221:9018 BBC FOUR</readable_source>
  <mapping>4544:4221:9018</mapping>
</epg>

After:

Code:

<epg>
  <source>DVB/ATSC EPG</source>
  <capture_source>42</capture_source>
  <mapping>4544:4221:9018</mapping>
</epg>

Another observation is that in the 'Channel Mapping' table, the "channel_source_oid" updates to match the capture source, but the "channel_source_number" is set to "0" whereas before that it would have been the EPG number.

I'm not sure if any of that matters. It will be quick enough for me to do the mapping manually via the proper NextPVR UI, but I was just wondering if the observations above would lead to other issues.