[mythtv-users] Disk-drive hiccups

[James Crow]

Bob Sully wrote:
> Hi all -
>
> Over the past several weeks, I have been having occasional instances of
> partitions becoming inaccessible suddenly.  This has only happened with
> the two partitions I use for Myth recordings and for video files.  Both of
> these are large JFS filesystems, have been for over a year with no prior
> problems.  Both were initially 700GB partitions; I recently upgraded both
> drives to 1.5TB units.  I used the -c switch when doing the format (took
> several hours on the 1.5T drives).  Even so, this is still happening;
> sometimes it happens after an hour or two of playing media, sometimes when
> the system is idle (which is a real problem if the drive isn't available
> when a recording starts (this happened once)).
>
> It's not a drive problem (hardware) because it's happened with the 750s as
> well as the 1.5T drives.  I'm wondering if it's a problem with JFS...?  I
> don't want to go to ext3 because it takes a week (not literally, but it
> seems like it) to fsck a big ext3 partition.  Would anyone recommend that
> I change over to XFS?
>
> Another cause COULD be software.  I had been running Ubuntu 8.10-x64, then
> upgraded to 9.04.  Soon afterward I started noticing this issue.  Has
> anyone else seen this since a Jaunty upgrade?
>
> I'm using Jean-Yves' upgraded 0.21 binaries with VDPAU, which I'm quite
> happy with.  This is a NOT a Myth issue, because I can't seem to access
> the involved drive outside of Myth, either, after this happens; the only
> fix appears to be a reboot.   I don't see anything in the system logs
> which would clue me in as to WHY this happens, only that the OS can't
> access the involved partition afterward.
>
> I did notice that when this happened yesterday, the involved drive
> designator changed over from /dev/sdb to /dev/sdd....!  Curiouser,
> curiouser!  I've not seen that happen before.
>
> Any ideas would be appereciated.  Thanks.
> Bob
>   
Bob,

  I can't comment on JFS, but I am running Mythbuntu amd64 with 500GB 
(Seagate) and 1TB (WD) drives for file storage. I run XFS on my TV and 
video drives and have had no issues. Maybe you could check dmesg and 
other system logs to see if there are any errors related to the 
filesystem. You said that it happened with both the 750s and the 1.5s, 
maybe the new kernel has a bug/problem with your sata chipset.

  I also had terrible problems with NFS. I am using CIFS for sharing my 
video directory between systems now. It seems that you are trying local 
access, but if not NFS may be a problem.

Cheers,
James