Here´s my little howto. Partly first seen in a posting from kodinerds.
Assuming you have already a TVHeadend Installation and want to backup
your channellist for restoring it in a fresh new installation.
I have DVBS2 and Satip DVBS Tuner. May be with DVBT or DVBC some things are different.
Imhop most work with TVHeadend is to get a small channel list fitting your personal needs
and sorted for your interests and not the funny standard bouquets you will get without addional work.
Nobody needs more than 3000 activated muxes/services - the first channel you´re always watching on place 648 and the next one at 2710… And EPG search and tranfer to your device will take a long time.
So - Configure your hardware and basic settings. There are already a lot of howtos in the net for this.
Let a initial scan be done. Map only the services you need.
Add channel Tags e.g. HD, FreeTV, Sport, Kidz, News or wathever you want to get things sorted. Assign your activated channels to your channel tags.
This work only has to be done once.
Do not forget to activate " synchronise channelgroups with backend " in kodi pvr/tv settings
If everything is in place as you like:
Make SCREENSHOTS OF YOUR WORKING (BASIC) CONFIGURATION !
Stop TVheadend service in kodi
backup /storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.tvheadend42/input/dvb/networks/YOURNetwork-ID/muxes
backup
/storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.tvheadend42/channel
Activate Tvheadend
On the new device/fresh installation :
activate TVHeadend, do your basic Config (Quick done with the screenshots you made!)
let a initial scan de done
mux only 1 service
don´t forget your picons, recording path, deactivating not needed EPG modules
and if you have more than 1 tuner: 1 tuner for EPG is enough.
Is this one activated channel doing its job ? fine…
Then :
deactivate TVHeadend service
delete
/storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.tvheadend42/input/dvb/networks/YOURNetwork-ID/muxes
and delete
/storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.tvheadend42/channel
restore “muxes” from backup to
/storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.tvheadend42/input/dvb/networks/YOURNetwork-ID/
restore “channel” from backup to
/storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.tvheadend42/
activate TVHeadend and restart your device
then let TVheadend do another scan and EPG update
thats it. All yours channels and channelgroups are in place again.
Another thing I prefer with setting up a device with a fresh installation is that I do not wan´t to configure all addons again and again.
Takes me hours of work with api keys, language settings and so on.
Well - this is the way I do prefer:
make a backup directory on my nas
copied
.kodi/addons
.kodi/userdata/addon_data
.kodi/userdata/Thumbnails
.kodi/userdata/advancedsettings.xml …/passwords.xml …/favourites.xml …/sources.xml?
storage/cdm
storage/picons
(may differ in your installation if u have videos or music files on the SD Card)
Then I do a fresh installation on SD Card
configured the system
Copied all files back, restarted and enabled all addons. Restarted again.
not working addons normally only need to be updated from repo.
Done.
EDIT :
to be safe do a additionally internal backup before copying/deleting things manually
so you can restore if the result is trouble
if build Versions old/new are strongly different then do not copy old addons over new ones already there from a fresh installation. Copy only the addon_data in this case to get configurations back you have already made.
Using the internal kodi file manager I always add sources for this job beginning from root