[mythtv-users] MythicalLibrarian, symlinks and Myth: Will this work or will Myth lose its mind?

Raymond Wagner raymond at wagnerrp.com
Tue Jan 31 20:27:03 UTC 2012


On 1/31/2012 14:07, Matt Emmott wrote:
> I think I've come up with a solution, but I was wondering if it will 
> cause issues. My old recording directory is 
> /var/lib/mythtv/recordings. It's a local 50GB partition running EXT3, 
> I believe. I have found using mythlink.pl <http://mythlink.pl> that I 
> can create symlinks in that folder that will point to the destination 
> CIFS share of /var/lib/mythtv/recordings3 (Don't ask where recordings2 
> went, it's a long story). So, I could repoint my storage group to 
> recordings, have ML move the files to recordings3/Episodes, and leave 
> symlinks behind. My question is, what kind of weird side effects would 
> I run into? I've already told the BE to follow symbolic links when 
> deleting files, so that shouldn't be an issue. I guess my biggest 
> concern would be with the reported space available to myth. My 
> /recordings3 folder is a 2TB mount, while /recordings is only 50GB. I 
> have Myth set to leave 1GB free at all times. How will Myth calculate 
> its available storage? Is it smart enough to see the true 
> destination's space used? Or will it always think there is 50GB free, 
> or some other weird scenario that I haven't thought of yet?

MythTV will be recording directly to the 50GB partition.  Hopefully this 
isn't a partition on the same disk that holds your database, and is not 
mounted directly on the recording path.  Since your average digital 
recording will be 6-8GB/hr, you've got less than eight hours of 
recording time before MythTV starts expiring content.  That could 
potentially be filled by a single block of primetime TV.  You must run 
mythicalibrarian at least that frequently.

When mythicalibrarian runs, it will copy the content over CIFS to your 
Windows server, leaving behind a symlink and freeing up room.  Honestly, 
I got lost in a mess of bash, writing new bash scripts in huge 
one-liners, that it the runs through to do the moving, but in the event 
you fill your destination filesystem, the best case scenario is that the 
content stays on your recording disk and mythicalibrarian fails out 
gracefully.  As before, after a couple hours of recording, your 
filesystem will be filled, and MythTV will begin expiring content.

So what will happen when you start expiring content?  Deletes follow 
symlinks, but the autoexpirer knows nothing of that.  All it knows is 
how large the file is, and in what order it is for deletion.  As you 
drop below 1GB (or higher if recording), the expirer will kick in.  
Default rate is every fifteen minutes, but as you close in on empty, 
that will accelerate to every three minutes.  On each pass, it will 
delete a recording.  Since it doesn't know deleting a symlink is of no 
worth, it will simply start working through your archived recordings 
over CIFS, clearing out the lowest ranking (usually the oldest) 
recordings.  Your recording filesystem will run out of space, the 
recording will fail, and the autoexpirer will just continue happily 
deleting those symlinks and emptying your CIFS share until it finally 
gets to your real recording directory, leaving only the latest six or 
seven hours of recordings.
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