[mythtv-users] How big is your database?

[f-myth-users at media.mit.edu]

I'm about to repartition, leaving everything except recordings in an
ext3fs partition, and putting all recordings into JFS.  But I'd rather
not discover that I've made the ext3 too small, and I'd rather not
waste gigs making it too big.

The only thing I have no idea about is whether the mysql database
tends to grow monotonically or not, and how large it typically gets.

Can somebody give me an idea of how large a database typically is
after Myth has been used a long while, or how fast it grows?  I'm
guessing that deleting a recording will correctly flush everything
else associated with it (cutlist, mythcomflagging, etc), but does the
DB keep any records of -everything- I've ever recorded, and will those
be likely to expand to large proportions?  (Basically, does the DB
bloat/leak as time goes on...)

And if I do mysqldump, is that likely to be enormous?  (I'm guessing
that it won't be if I pipe the result through gzip before putting it
anywhere, but I don't have a big-enough DB yet to really know.)

(If the answer is, "up for years and under a gig", I won't worry about
it; I need at least a gig or two of slopspace just to make upgrades
easier, etc.  But if the answer is "a gig a year" or whatever, I'll
worry.  I'm having a hard time discovering this via websearching.)

My other alternative is to put the DB in the JFS, but I'd rather keep
it separate so I can relatively easily nuke that partition without
worrying about the DB---especially since XFS/JFS are clumsy to resize
(especially to shrink).

Thanks!