[mythtv-users] Read the question before trying to answer it

[Yeechang Lee]

Debabrata Banerjee <davatar at comcast.net> says:
> I already have several other raid arrays in my myth box for other
> purposes, I am quite sure this is not what I want.


> If I suppose nothing to meet these requirements exist, this could be
> easily implemented in mythtv, actually it 'sort of' does it right
> now if you use multiple backends with storage. It just can't manage
> the storage and can't have more than one per server.

Correct; 0.20 is set to add multiple storage locations per backend and
will thus essentialy do what you are looking to achieve (wilingness to
accept the possibility of losing part, but not necessarily all,
recordings if a disk goes down).

I'm even more cavaliar about my recordings than Debabrata is; my 2TB
NAS uses RAID 1, not RAID 5, so if any of the four disks goes it takes
the whole array down with it. I've thought about using RAID 5 on it as
my 2.8TB array does but I can use the extra capacity and hey, we're
only talking about TV. It'd get filled up again within three months,
anyway; that's how long it took to get filled up the first time
around, and ever since it's been a never-ending battle to free up
enough space for the next day's worth of recordings.

> RAID is slow, complicated, wasteful, and overkill for myth. A single
> disk can handle many streams of video. A fault-tolerant filesystem
> and JBOD is what I want.
> 
> *sigh*

Since Debabrata is apparently polite enough to leave his frustration
to a single sigh, let me take up the fallen banner of reading
comprehension. In this case we had not one, not two, but *three*
geniuses who simply didn't bother to, you know, actually *read the
message*. The roll of honor includes:

* Tom Lichti, who blithely suggests Debabrata try RAID 5 without
  noticing that Debabrata explictly says he didn't want to use RAID.
* Rod, who gives the "Did you Google" answer (a quite appropriate one
  in many circumstances, I agree) and then suggests a filesystem that
  a) doesn't do what Debabrata wants to do at all and
  b) in any case has a complexity that is completely inappropriate to
  the simple-is-better thrust of Debabrata's message.
* Chris Henderson, who like Tom also suggests RAID 5 without
  comprehending what Debabrata is asking (and not asking)
  for--completely with the requisite condescending "Um"--and then
  "helpfully" gives a long lecture on what RAID is.

Bravo, gentlemen. Bravo.

-- 
Yeechang Lee <ylee at pobox.com> | +1 650 776 7763 | San Francisco CA US