[mythtv] Expiry problem

Ian Dall ian at beware.dropbear.id.au
Sat Apr 28 03:30:10 UTC 2012


On Mon, 2012-04-23 at 21:50 -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 04/23/2012 06:55 PM, Ian Dall wrote:
> > On Sun, 2012-04-22 at 18:37 -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> >> On 04/22/2012 11:26 AM, Ian Dall wrote:
> >>> On Mon, 2012-04-23 at 00:44 +0930, Ian Dall wrote:
> >>>> On Wed, 2012-04-18 at 21:32 -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> >>>>> On 04/17/2012 07:10 PM, Ian Dall wrote:
> >>>>>> I have been running a recent 0.25 pre-release(*) and have run into
> >>>>>> problems with expiry. What happens is that the disk fills up, the expiry
> >>>>>> thread runs, deletes the entry from the database, but does not delete
> >>>>>> the actual files containing the recording. Since the disk is still full,
> >>>>>> it goes ahead and deletes the next show and in a short space of time
> >>>>>> there is a full disk, and all programs which allow auto expire have been
> >>>>>> deleted from the DB. I recover the DB from backup and manually delete
> >>>>>> files which have been recorded since the backup, but obviously it is
> >>>>>> annoying to have to do this.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Possibly relevant is that a) I have a separate master and slave backend
> >>>>>> and b) am using NFS for the storage. The logs don't show anything
> >>>>>> interesting. Mythtv *thinks* it is doing the right thing. There are
> >>>>>> messages about expiring recordings, but nothing to do with failing to
> >>>>>> delete a file.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I'd appreciate any clues about what could cause this or how to debug it.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>> Are the expired shows in the Deleted recording group?  Watch Recordings,
> >>>>> MENU|Change Group Filter, then select "Deleted" and see if any that the
> >>>>> backend logs say were expired are there.
> >>>> [iptv problem]
> > Unfortunately it seems that the iptv problem is not the cause of the
> > fail to delete option.
> >
> > So, the disk filled up again, and yes, it ended up with about 90
> > recordings in the "Deleted" recording group. Restarting the master
> > backend causes all the files to be deleted. I notice in the logs that
> > there are successful regular deletions, (signalled by "About to delete
> > file" messages) up until about 2:30pm then nothing until after the
> > backend has been restarted at 11pm (after the disk space is exhausted),
> > when all the files in the "Deleted" recording group get deleted.
> >
> > I notice that the delete thread does check that the file has gone (and
> > would produce an error message if it isn't) but I don't see any of these
> > error messages.
> >
> > It looks like the DeleteThread is simply not running. A check with gdb
> > doesn't seem to show any deadlocked threads, but it is not always easy
> > to easy to identify which thread is which.
> 
> It sounds to me like MythTV starts an iptv recording and "stops" it, but 
> the recording keeps going without MythTV's "conscious" knowledge.  These 
> recordings fill up the file system, and MythTV begins to expire 
> recordings, but because they're still open/in use, they don't actually 
> get removed and, perhaps, cause the delete thread to hang.  Restarting 
> mythbackend closes all open files and means that next time you restart 
> it will resume deleting the files it had in the queue, which are no 
> longer open, and will get removed.

As noted, I have ruled out iptv by deleting the tuner.

I have also been capturing the network traffic between master and slave.
I have also set gdb breakpoints in the slave, and /still/ I don't
understand what is going on ;-(

What I can say for sure is that the slave gets a DELETE_RECORDING
command. The recording is, at this stage in the "Default" recording
group so MainServer::DoHandleDeleteRecording (mainserver.cpp:2468)
figures that "justexpire" is true, changes the recording group to
"Deleted" and returns. The code to start the DeleteThread is after the
return and is never executed (on the slave at least).

I'm having trouble figuring out which threads are supposed to persist,
which get started on demand and which get started from timers.
Particularly in the case of the DeleteThread, how is it supposed to be
started? I also am having trouble figuring out why delete involves the
slave at all. The recording is available to the master so why doesn't
the master just delete it?

Regards,
Ian


-- 
Ian Dall <ian at beware.dropbear.id.au>



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