[mythtv-users] Recordings Paths

[Simon Hobson]

Mike Perkins <mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk> wrote:

> Like, perhaps, filling up your root disk?

Which, in case anyone isn't aware, can make for a bad day - and a zero score on the WAF

> *All* recording directories should be on other volumes than your system disk, for safety's sake - unless you're only running a small test system, of course.
> 
> For I/O efficiency, each directory declared as a storage directory should be on it's own spindle and occupying the entire disk. That way you won't get head thrashing during recording.

I'll add that recordings should not go into the root of any filesystem. Suppose you mounted a recordings drive at /disk1 and put your recordings directly into /disk1. There's a problem that causes disk1 to not mount (or be unmounted), and now /disk1 is on your root filesystem which probably isn't very big - it will fill very quickly and your system will die a horrible death - potentially with serious DB corruption (depending where that's stored).

If instead you put your recordings in (say) /disk1/myth, then if disk1 isn't mounted, /disk1/myth doesn't exist and recordings will fail rather than crash your system. If you have other recordings directories defined, then myth will record into those as I believe it will detect that missing directory and not try to use it.