[mythtv-users] deleting files

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Tue Nov 5 15:58:51 UTC 2013


On 11/05/2013 10:17 AM, Daryl McDonald wrote:
> Greetings Mythizens, Am I correct in assuming that files that I have
> deleted through the front end will be deleted by the back end first
> when the 750 Gb partition fills up? (before files not deleted in the
> front end) I am using a combined FE/BE 0.27 fixes within a Ubuntu12.04
> lts desktop.

Short Live TV recordings (<2min) are automatically deleted 
"immediately," as created (to get rid of garbage caused by channel 
surfing).  Other than that, MythTV tries to keep recordings around under 
the "unused space is wasted space" ideal.

When you delete a recording, it will be placed into the Deleted 
recording group.  By default, shows that are deleted to the Deleted 
recording group will be removed from the file system "soon" (allowing 
you a short period during which to change your mind).  However, you may 
tell MythTV to keep those Deleted recordings for any number of days from 
1 to 365, or "forever" (by specifying -1).

Then, when a file system fills up *and* MythTV is recording a new show 
to that file system, it will start to expire old recordings.  First to 
be expired are Live TV recordings.  After those are all gone, recordings 
in the Deleted recording group will be expired (even if they are newer 
than the "Time to retain deleted recordings (days)" setting).  Once all 
Deleted recordings are gone, recordings that are not Deleted are 
expired.  If you've enabled the "Watched before unwatched" setting ("If 
enabled, programs that have been marked as watched will be expired 
before programs that have not been watched."), then any recordings (on 
that file system) that are marked as Watched will be deleted before any 
recording that's not marked as Watched, regardless of auto-expiration 
priority.  Note, also, that you can specify the Auto-Expire method to 
choose the rules by which the order for expiration will be chosen.

So, it's critical to remember that only those recordings on the file 
system in use are eligible for expiration, so if you have multiple file 
systems and your recordings are not well balanced  across file systems 
(in terms of space usage and Deleted/not-Deleted and Watched/not-Watched 
and various Auto-Expire priorities), you could lose some recording 
that's more important to you than others that aren't expired.

So, in the end, if you care about the order things are removed, you 
should manually remove recordings to make room on all your file systems 
for new recordings rather than rely on MythTV to try to guess the right 
order.  You may go into the System Status screen in mythfrontend and 
select Auto-Expire Order and see the "priority" order for expiration.  
Then, simply select to delete the recordings you care least about (using 
MENU, by default "M").

Mike


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