[mythtv-users] Partitioning

[R. G. Newbury]

On 03/06/2010 04:04 PM, Simon Hobson wrote:
> Christopher Meredith wrote:
>
>> > I am setting up my mythbox today, and I have two hard drives one is
>> 750 GB
>>> and the other is 500 GB...what would be the best way to partition them
>>> should i put / on the 500 then /var/lib/mythtv on the 750 and
>>> /var/lib/mysql
>>> on the 500?
>>
>> Why put / and /var on different partitions?
>
> So that when* /var fills up, it doesn't bring the whole system down with
> it - potentially corrupting your root filesystem while it's at it.
>
> * Yes I know it shouldn't fill up, but it's not hard for something to
> use a bit more space, or use it a bit more quickly, than your expected.
> I've had it a few times over the years.
>
> Personally, I'd have / as a real partition, /boot if you are old
> fashioned and set in your ways like me, as real partitions. I'd stick
> the rest of the 500G drive in an LVM group and stick /var on that (nice
> and easy to resize if needed). I'd probably also stick /var/lib/mysql on
> a separate LVM volume. That'll leave 400G+ which I'd allocate to video
> storage.
>
> On the 750G drive I'd make a partition large enough to store a complete
> copy of the running system less the videos - and set up a cron job to
> duplicate the running system to it on a periodic basis. Better still,
> use something like Storebackup to keep more than one version. The rest
> I'd allocate to video storage. Not sure if I;d make a separate LVM group
> for it (ease of resizing), or just use plain partitions (better
> performance ?).
>
> That's what I'd do anyway. At the moment my Myth backend runs as a Xen
> DomU and all filesystems are on LVMs expoerted as block devices from the
> Dom0.
>
The major problem with making your video store out of an LVM group, is 
that if any of the drives in the LVM die, you will likely lose ALL of 
the recordings. (Or at least that is what I remember reading here.) With 
storage groups, you just add another partition (/video, /video2..etc.) 
and myth takes care of it, automagically. Of course, if a disk dies, you 
lose what is on it. If you are really worried, then RAID is the way to 
go but it is an expensive route.

Geoff

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