[mythtv-users] Where is that "keep this much HDD space free" setting???

[Michael T. Dean]

On 12/15/2008 06:51 PM, stuart wrote:
> Where is that "keep this much HDD space free" setting???
>
> I have a MBE and a SBE running.  The SBE is at 100% (again!).  I 
> remember setting this "keep free" value on one of the machines (I had 
> thought the MBE).  But I don't remember under which menu I found it.  I 
> have looked in both the front-end menus and the setup menus.
>   

In mythfrontend settings:

Extra Disk Space
Extra disk space (in Gigabytes) that you want to keep free on the 
recording file systems beyond what MythTV requires.

in TV Settings|General settings under "General (AutoExpire)" (page 2 or so).

> Does anyone know where I can set the upper limit of the HDD capacity 
> that mythtv will use?
>   

That's actually a different idea...  You can tell Myth how much space 
/not/ to use, but can't tell it how much space to use (other than by 
limiting the space available through partitioning--which, IMHO, is the 
best way to keep Myth from using all the space, anyway).

> Do I have to set this up only on the MBE or do I need to set it on the 
> SBE as well?

It's global.

As a matter of fact, it may be more global than you want.  It applies to 
/all/ filesystems used by the directories specified in all the storage 
groups you've defined.  So, if you have a 500GB HDD and a new 1.5TB HDD 
and you want to make sure Myth only uses half of the 1.5TB, you can't do 
so by setting the "Extra Disk Space" to 750GB.  If you did so, Myth 
would expire any recording it recorded to your 500GB HDD.

So, to keep Myth from using half of your 1.5TB HDD, partition it into 2 
750GB partitions--one for Myth's exclusive use and one for "other" 
programs.  No need to commingle recordings and other non-Myth data.

Note that you may still want to set "Extra Disk Space" to a few GiB, 
just so that you can ride out the period between when new recordings 
start and the autoexpire thread runs again.  How many GiB you need 
depends on your configuration--number of capture cards and bitrates--but 
you should do fine with less than 3, even for a multi-capture card HDTV 
setup.

Mike