[mythtv-users] Need to manage my HDD usage, any way to tell where a recording resides?

[Michael T. Dean]

On 11/13/2008 07:25 PM, stuart wrote:
> Michael T. Dean wrote:
>   
>> On 11/13/2008 10:47 AM, stuart wrote:
>>     
>>> I need to manage my HDD usage.  I have a MBE and SBE and need to reduce 
>>> disk usage on the MBE by about 170GBytes in order to start removing a 
>>> Physical Volume out of my 1 Logical Volume (BTW, don't do like I did and 
>>> collapse all your mythtv files into 1 Logical Volume).
>>>
>>> Is there a way (i.e. while looking at recording in mythweb for instance) 
>>> to tell where (the MBE or the SBE) a recording resides?
>>>       
>> IMHO, the best approach is to use mythrename.pl --link to create a 
>> directory full of links, then grep an ls.
>>
>> ls -l /path/to/symlinks/dir | grep 
>> '/path/to/directory/on/hard/drive/to/empty'
> Thank you for your response to my posting.  But will this work for me? 
> I have everything on my MBE in 1 Logical Volume (my bad).

Re-read the above statement.

>   I'm thinking 
> that all links will be to the same directory no matter which hard drive 
> they actually are on.
>
> Regardless, what I really need is a way to tell if the recording is on 
> the SBE or the MBE machine.

Now re-read the statement you just re-read, above.  Isn't that saying, 
"[you] have everything on [your] MBE?"

>  As I only want to reduce disk usage on the 
> MBE machine. I'm thinking that the mythrename.pl script will not be able 
> to create links to a file on a different machine.
>   

It only creates links to files available through the "local" 
filesystem--even if that filesystem is actually a remote filesystem 
available through a network file system, such as NFS or CIFS.

However, if you have multiple filesystems, they /must/ necessarily be 
mounted at different mount points, so you could tell by directory, even 
if you're using NFS/CIFS.  If you have all your recordings on a single 
filesystem, that filesystem exists on the machine with all the hard 
drives in it...

> In the end, I have yet to hear of a easy way to manage mythtv disk usage 
> (i.e. there is not an easy way to tell where a given recording resides).

The only other thing I can think of that you might be asking is, "I have 
a single filesystem with all my recordings and I need to shrink the LVM, 
but before doing so, I wish to move some of the recordings to an extra 
hard drive in my MBE that I will /not/ be sharing to other backends 
using NFS/CIFS, so how can I choose recordings whose hostname is the 
MBE's (i.e. that are supposed to exist on the MBE)?"

If that's the question you're asking, I'd again recommend mythrename.pl 
--link.  Use, specifically, something like:

mkdir ~/temporary_links
mythrename.pl --link ~/temporary_links --underscores --format '%T-%S-%hn'

To get a bunch of links that include the hostname, i.e.


lrwxrwxrwx  1 me me    59 2008-11-13 19:59 
Smallville-_Toxic-_hostname.mpg -> 
/srv/mythtv/tv/b/recordings/1181_20081002200000.mpg

Then, you can grep an ls for the hostname to find files that are meant 
to be on the MBE (and that can be moved to any directory on the 
MBE--even if it's not accessible by other hosts--that's specified in the 
appropriate storage group without having to edit the DB).

Mike