My mythbuntu box was being erratic, with some disk failures on my root drive. I decided to rebuild it using an SSD, but needed to copy the data from mythv's MySQL database onto the new disk.

The recordings were already held on a different disk, so they weren't a concern for this re-install.

Backup Database

To backup the database before upgrade, go to /usr/share/mythtv and run

echo "DBBackupDirectory=/home/user" > ~/.mythtv/backuprc
./mythconverg_backup.pl --verbose

Restore Database

To restore the database on a new install, go to /usr/share/mythtv and run

echo "DBBackupDirectory=/home/user" > ~/.mythtv/backuprc
./mythconverg_restore.pl --verbose --drop_database --create_database

NOTE: This will completely wipe the new database and replace it with your backup!

Static IP Address

By default a mythbuntu box uses DHCP to get its ip address. To change to using a static one, edit /etc/network/interfaces and add the eth0 lines are required:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
    address 192.168.1.99
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    network 192.168.1.0
    broadcast 192.168.1.255
    gateway 192.168.1.1