[mythtv-users] Auto-expire two files while recording two files causing IOBOUND block.

[Blues Guy]

I've got a small problem with either my Myth system,
or the shows I like to watch, depending on how you
look at it. :-)

I have my Myth box setup to record Letterman and Leno,
and also to only keep the 2 most recent shows of each.
 So when it starts recording the two shows, it detects
that it can expire the oldest two.  So now, it's
writing two MPEG-2 files from the PVR's, while
deleting two large MPEG-2 files from the drive and
this causes blocking every night, consistently and
repeatably.  (and somewhat understandably).  So my
question is, is there anyway to either run the expire
process at a later time, or at a lower priority to
solve this?

The only other thing I can think of doing, is that I'm
using ext3 and I forgot to use the "-T largefile4" to
tune the block size from the default, so maybe the
increased inode count is giving it fits on what is
essentially four 2GB files being worked at the same
time?  I created a separate partition for /mnt/store
so fixing this would be pretty simple if it would
help.

Does anyone have firsthand experience with this
parameter to know how much of a differnce it makes, or
have a similar scheduling situation, but without the
IOBOUND problem?

For the record, the system is a Pundit, PVR-250 &
PVR-350, 2GHz Celery (running at 2.6GHz), 512MB, 200GB
7200RPM Western Digital HDD.

The evidence from the backend log :'>

2004-01-29 23:35:02 Started recording "Late Show With
David Letterman" on channel: 1002 on cardid: 1,
sourceid 1
2004-01-29 23:35:02 Started recording "The Tonight
Show With Jay Leno" on channel: 1005 on cardid: 2,
sourceid 1
2004-01-29 23:35:02 Changing from None to
RecordingOnly
2004-01-29 23:35:02 Changing from None to
RecordingOnly
2004-01-29 23:44:44 Expiring "Late Show With David
Letterman" from 2004-01-27T23:35:00, too many
episodes.
2004-01-29 23:44:47 Expiring "The Tonight Show With
Jay Leno" from 2004-01-27T23:35:00, too many episodes.
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriterIOBOUND -
blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
IOBOUND - blocking in ThreadedFileWriter::Write()
2004-01-30 00:00:01 Found changes in the todo list.


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