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Draft Document

Note: This document is only intended for system administrators.

In comparison with previous versions Mistika Ultima v8.10 uses different installation paths, new Aja drivers and a new license server.  

All this is installed automatically during the upgrades, but you may want to understand what is exactly changed and how can you revert some of those changes (or all of them). This document provides all the necessary information.

Note: This document is only for CentOS systems.  Mistika Ultima 8,10 only works on CentOS 7.xxx, it does not work on Suse11 any more.

New installation paths:

Mistika v8.10 does not touch any files of the previous Mistika versions. Instead, it is installed in this new path structure.

The old version is still in MISTIKA-ENV ( where the link points to), while the new versions are in $HOME/SGO Apps (base software) and $HOME/SGO AppData folder (local configuration files).  This change has been made to accommodate other Mistika products in coherent manner and for multi platform support.

The shared folder is independent both from old and new versions, and all its contents will remain untouched after the upgrade (nothing is overwritten).  From this point,  each version will find it trough its own link: MISTIKA-ENV/shared  (link from old versions) and SGO AppData/shared (link from new versions)  which will point both to the same shared folder after the upgrade (unless you change it later), wherever it is located. 

Note: In the new version 8.10  the path to the shared folder is also defined in the MISTIKASHARED variable of the SGO AppData/Mistika/MISTIKA_WORK file, and mistika will also obey that variable.  ( mConfig will manage all this automatically, but we mention in case of system administrators doing manual changes ....)

The old version can still work perfectly (explained in next point).  But its old icons (  MistikaSetup and mistika)  are removed from the desktop to avoid confusion with the new version, and they are moved to a dedicated subfolder on the desktop: Desktop/Old Mistika Version.  

Also, each mConfig (old and new) can still change between different Mistika versions of their same folder structure (pre-8.10 or post-8.10), but no mConfig can be used to switch between new versions in SGO Apps to versions underMISTIKA-ENV.xxx folders or vice versa.

Using the old version (without the need to uninstall the new one)

When you want to use the old version you just need to do this:

1- press Desktop->Old Mistika Version->AJA Downgrade for old version.  This will unload the new AJA driver and it will load the old AJA driver in a temporal console. It will also restart the license server using the old one.

You need to do that because the old versions can not work with the new AJA driver, so we have put that little tool  to unload the new driver and reload the old driver temporally. 

2-  Then open the old mistika (or the old mConfig) with the icons that you will find in that same "Old Mistika Version" folder 

Once you finish using the old version just close that console from step 1 by following the instructions on it, and this action will reload the new driver for using the new version again.  

Please note that the Downgrade tool does not change anything in the system, it is just a script that will unload the new driver and load the old driver and the old license server temporally. For example,  doing a reboot will always load the new driver and new license server normally, so the new version is always ready to use by default. 

Using the old version in linux consoles, ssh, or command lines in general:  When you execute a mistika application by command line ( things like mConfig, mistika -r, BatchManager, etc) the systems will look for those executables in the PATH variable of the $HOME/.bashrc file, being important the order that they are defined.  After installing 8.10 the new paths from v8.10 will have preference in that variable, so if you need to execute the old versions then you will need to do it with the whole path.  

Example:  If you execute "mistika" without any path indication then it will execute the new version (the one in SGO Apps/Mistika Ultima/bin), but if you execute "/home/mistika/MISTIKA-ENV/bin/mistika" it will execute the old version.  Alternatively, you can change the .bashrc PATH order if you want to invert this behaviour permanently (then logout and login to refresh changes)

Videoboard drivers

- The DVS videoboard works identically, nothing has changed for it in v8.10. 

- The AJA board requires a new driver (v15 or later) that is installed automatically by mConfig. This driver replaces the old v14 driver at /root/AJA, and the old one is renamed as AJA.v14. (That is enough to change an AJA driver, as the aja service always load the one at /root/AJA at boot time ).

The AJA boards may also need a new firmware, but it is installed automatically by mConfig if necessary.  Please note that as a difference to the driver, the firmware is independent from the mistika version. The new firmware works fine both for old and for new versions, so you should not need to do anything about it.

Note: There is also an SGO custom firmware for using AJA boards in 12G mode (mainly for 8K systems). That firmware still needs to be managed manually. Please contact SGO if you are in that case.

NVidia drivers

This is an independent issue as the NVidia driver is installed and managed by the user, not by mConfig and neither by the Mistika installer. But it is worth to mention that Mistika v8.10 requires a modern NVidia driver (all NVidia driver versions from May 2019 and later have been successfully tested up to the date of this document, but older ones may fail to work with the new R3D cudanew decoding or even make mistika to crash at startup).  

The newer nvidia drivers also work perfectly fine with the old versions, so it does not need to be reverted when using old versions.

How to remove the new version v8.10 and revert to the old configuration pre-v8.10 permanently

This should never be really necessary because both versions can perfectly coexist, but if you want to do so this is the way to do it: 

- Remove the new mistika and Mistika Config  icons from the desktop, and recover the old ones from the Old Mistika Version folder. (Then you can remove the Old Mistika Version folder, as you will not use it anymore)

- Remove SGO Apps and SGO AppData folders. This will delete the new version

- Replace /root/AJA folder with /root/AJA.14 (which is a backup of the old driver)

- Copy the old license server and its libraries to flexlm folders (this is where license server is launched at boot time):

su

cp -f /home/MISTIKA-ENV/bin/legacy/sgoLicenseServer.bin /var/flexlm/bin/.

cp -rf /home/MISTIKA-ENV/bin/lib /var/flexlm/bin/.

- Reboot. 

Potential License issues

- Mistika v8.10 can not work with Mistika 8.8 licenses. However, if the system has internet and it is under an annual maintenance contract it will receive the new license automatically during the v8.10 installation (a reboot may be needed)

- In rare cases (depending on how old the previous version was)  the new version may change the LMData identification of the system, being required  to ask SGO for a new license. So we recommend to plan the upgrade to not happen during a potentially "urgent" situation.