[mythtv-users] Hard drive selection when Mythtv is in a VM

[Hika van den Hoven]

Hoi Lee,

Thursday, January 4, 2018, 3:43:20 PM, you wrote:



> On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 9:26 AM, Jim Abernathy <jfabernathy at outlook.com> wrote:

>     
>  
>  

>  
>  
> On Jan 4, 2018, at 9:09 AM, Lee Whitty <lee.whitty at gmail.com> wrote: 
>  
>  
> I'm running my mythtv backend in a VM on Fedora. I mirrored all of
> my VM drives after having a failed drive last year. Having the
> ability to easily snapshot a VM prior to making changes is
> invaluable. So is having the ability to easily  expand the drive to
> hold additional content, and easily backup the VM by copying the qcow file to another drive. 

>   
> One thing I'd do differently, and what others have mentioned, would
> be to store the recordings directory on a separate VM drive. I could
> live with losing my recordings, and it would keep the VM much
> smaller and easier to back up. I will likely  reconfigure this at some point.

>   
> -Lee   

>  
> Lee Whitty 
>  
>  
>  
>  
> lee.whitty at gmail.com
>         
>  

>   
> So you keep your main VM drive small and create a new Virtural
> Drive for recordings.  Do you go ahead and pre-allocate the complete
> size of the recording Virtual drive? 

>   
> JIm A 
>   
>  

> I use thin provisioning, so the space for the VM drive file isn't
> allocated until it's needed. I also have scripts to monitor free
> space on the physical drives so I can take action if they're in danger of running out of space.


> -Lee 

In stead of using a virtualdrive you can also use a physical drive or
partition.
From the manual 9.8.1.1 "Access to entire physical hard disk":
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /path/to/file.vmdk
-rawdisk /dev/sda

and 9.8.1.2: "Access to individual physical hard disk partitions":
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /path/to/file.vmdk
-rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1,5

You however must ensure that any used partition is not accessed by any
other OS while in use!
I use this this for datadisk in one of my VMs. It should be a little
faster.

I use

Tot mails,
  Hika                            mailto:hikavdh at gmail.com

"Zonder hoop kun je niet leven
Zonder leven is er geen hoop
Het eeuwige dilemma
Zeker als je hoop moet vernietigen om te kunnen overleven!"

De lerende Mens