[mythtv-users] TV recordings not expiring, disk filling up

[Simon Hobson]

Anthony Hill <arhill at gmail.com> wrote:

> My disk keeps filling up with recorded TV. It has become a real problem.
> 
> I've looked for hours - but I cannot find the auto-expire settings.
> 
> From the wiki http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/MythTV-HOWTO_-_0.26#Auto-Expire  :-
> 
> The default setting is for all scheduled recordings to be eligible for auto-expiration; this can be changed in the Settings->TV Settings->General page by manipulating the "Auto Expire Default" checkbox. 
> 
> ..um ok - I dont seem to have a Settings menu item - are we talking about the frontend or the backend ? Either way - I dont have one. (I am running 0.26 on debian wheezy).

mythtv-setup on the backend, but also available via MythWeb

> I've changed AutoExpireExtraSpace to 20 in mythweb - but that doesnt seem to have done anything. 
> 
> Any suggestions on where I should look for this  ?  

Note that there are several interacting settings which control this.

The first is "how much free space to maintain" which is a per-filesystem control. Eg, if you set it to 20G then Myth will try and keep 20G of free space in each recording group directory. This is only done (I believe) when it is recording to that filesystem. Basically, *after* having chosen which directory to record into, the system will then monitor free space in that filesystem and expire recordings as required - starting with live TV and deleted recordings, and after those, recordings marked as auto expire.

Then you have the "is this recording expirable" flag which is more complicated. Each individual recording has the flag, and if set then it is eligible to be expired. You can manually change this, but the default comes from the recording rule that was used to record it. In turn, the default value for *new* rules is the default expire flag - ie changing the default does *not* alter the setting in any existing rules. Similarly, changing a rule does not affect any existing recordings.