[mythtv-users] MythTV Secondary FE/BE Setup Advice

[James Crow]

On Tue, 2008-09-02 at 08:04 -0700, Brad DerManouelian wrote:
> On Sep 2, 2008, at 7:48 AM, Allen Edwards wrote:
> 
> > 
> > 
> > On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 5:31 AM, James Crow <james at ultratans.com>
> > wrote:
> >         After having Myth running for the better part of two years
> >         on one TV I
> >         have purchased a second Myth box for the other TV in the
> >         house. I am
> >         debating making it a secondary BE/FE or just using it as a
> >         FE. My
> >         current BE/FE machine can only hold two drives (2x 500GB
> >         SATA). One
> >         drive is for recordings and one drive is OS and other media
> >         files (DVD
> >         rips, flac audio, etc).
> >         
> >         The new system came with a 500GB SATA drive. Plenty of room
> >         for OS
> >         install, but how do I best utilize the space? I don't watch
> >         much TV so I
> >         don't need it for TV recording space. I would like to use
> >         the space for
> >         storing DVD rips and flac audio. So far I have not found the
> >         right
> >         documentation to tell me how/if space local to a secondary
> >         backend can
> >         be used within Myth. In the documentation it mentions
> >         setting the
> >         storage directories per BE, but I think that only applies to
> >         TV
> >         recording space. I tried to run the video manager on the
> >         slave BE and it
> >         wanted to remove the video files stored on the master BE.
> >         
> >         Ideally I would prefer to keep all recording duties on the
> >         master BE so
> >         that the slave BE can be powered off except as needed for
> >         watching
> >         TV/movies. Is there a way to have more media files available
> >         to a slave
> >         BE without causing problems for the master BE?
> >         
> >         BTW these are both Mythbuntu 8.04.1 systems if it matters.
> >         
> >         Thanks,
> >         James
> >         
> >         ____
> > 
> > I have a frontend only machine and, while it has a button to import
> > DVD, it won't do it.  It is missing the transcode engine, which is
> > part of the backend.  So rule that option out.  I assume you would
> > also need a database to log the rips as well.  I have not tried it,
> > but a frontend-secondary backend souds like something to try.
> > 
> 
> Running a slave backend without any tuners is not a supported
> configuration. It might work, it might set your cat on fire.
> If you want to use your new machine for storage, NFS export paths from
> that machine, mount them on your master backend and use the paths as
> if they were local. That is a supported configuration.
> 
> 
> -Brad
> 
Thanks Brad. I seem to remember a discussion on this list about running
a master BE without a tuner. AFAIR the concensus was that a master BE
without a tuner is unsupported, but I do not recall any mention of a
slave without a tuner. Maybe that should be added to the docs. Something
like "If you plan/want/dream of having a slave BE it must have at least
one tuner in it."

It seems that NFS is my only option.

Thanks,
James