[mythtv-users] Adding another backend, and moving the master server to it?

[Michael T. Dean]

On 08/11/2007 04:26 PM, Bruce Markey wrote:
> Paul wrote:
> ...
>   
>> As you note on disk layout etc, this is all determined, its more how  
>> do I get data from old to new, and use capacity on the backend in  
>> future. I think the 400GB on the frontend (LVM) allocated to Myth 
>>     
> LVM would be great if you are running a usenet news server
> on the machine. If, however, you are using the space only for
> mythtv video files then you would be better off not using LVM
> and mounting each disk as a separate partition.
>   

I completely agree with Bruce.  I've been running LVM-free (and MD-free)
since at least 6 months before Storage Groups.  Not having filesystems
split across multiple disks is a great thing--if I lose one disk, I lose
one disk of data (and, IMHO, TV is not worth RAID'ing).

>> (currently 150GB on old server) is more than enough for now! The  
>> disks are the samsung ones and they are very quite, acceptable for  
>> the living area as they are pretty much the only noisy thing in the  
>> case once the CPU fan has spun down with AMD cool'n'quiet.
>>
>> Happy to run SVN, but it seemed that storage groups was a step to far  
>> at the moment to me, and the replies I think agree with that.
>>     
> Well no, that wasn't the point at all. Previous version only
> allow one dir for recordings. Storage groups simply means that
> you can name more than one directory that the system can use.
> Typing in a second path is only five seconds work, really =).
> There is no daunting task.
>
> The point was that if you were reluctant to upgrade until there
> was a release then mount one disk for now as your one and only
> recording dir.

And check out the script myth_archive_job.pl in the contrib directory,
which can be set up to automatically or manually move recordings from
the recordings directory to other named directories (on other
filesystems/disks).  It will create symlinks in the recordings directory
that refer to the recording file in another directory, so you can use
far more space than is available in your Myth recordings directory. 
Though Myth may think you have 400GB available, it may say things like,
"Using 1300GB of 400GB total," which looks pretty cool.

>  When you upgrade, add the another path to your
> second disk. What I was suggesting is that you not tie the two
> disks together with LVM just to make all the space available
> in the short term for just a few weeks.

Definitely agree.

Mike