[mythtv-users] Where is that "keep this much HDD space free" setting???

[Michael T. Dean]

On 12/16/2008 11:57 AM, stuart wrote:
> stuart wrote:
>   
>> Michael T. Dean wrote:
>>     
>>> On 12/15/2008 06:51 PM, stuart wrote:
>>>       
>>>> Where is that "keep this much HDD space free" setting???
>>>>
>>>> I have a MBE and a SBE running.  The SBE is at 100% (again!).  I 
>>>> remember setting this "keep free" value on one of the machines (I had 
>>>> thought the MBE).  But I don't remember under which menu I found it.  I 
>>>> have looked in both the front-end menus and the setup menus.
>>> In mythfrontend settings:
>>>
>>> Extra Disk Space
>>> Extra disk space (in Gigabytes) that you want to keep free on the 
>>> recording file systems beyond what MythTV requires.
>>>
>>> in TV Settings|General settings under "General (AutoExpire)" (page 2 or so).
>>>       
>>>> Does anyone know where I can set the upper limit of the HDD capacity 
>>>> that mythtv will use?
>>> That's actually a different idea...  You can tell Myth how much space 
>>> /not/ to use, but can't tell it how much space to use (other than by 
>>> limiting the space available through partitioning--which, IMHO, is the 
>>> best way to keep Myth from using all the space, anyway).
>>>       
>>>> Do I have to set this up only on the MBE or do I need to set it on the 
>>>> SBE as well?
>>> It's global.
>>>
>>> As a matter of fact, it may be more global than you want.  It applies to 
>>> /all/ filesystems used by the directories specified in all the storage 
>>> groups you've defined.  So, if you have a 500GB HDD and a new 1.5TB HDD 
>>> and you want to make sure Myth only uses half of the 1.5TB, you can't do 
>>> so by setting the "Extra Disk Space" to 750GB.  If you did so, Myth 
>>> would expire any recording it recorded to your 500GB HDD.
>>>
>>> So, to keep Myth from using half of your 1.5TB HDD, partition it into 2 
>>> 750GB partitions--one for Myth's exclusive use and one for "other" 
>>> programs.  No need to commingle recordings and other non-Myth data.
>>>
>>> Note that you may still want to set "Extra Disk Space" to a few GiB, 
>>> just so that you can ride out the period between when new recordings 
>>> start and the autoexpire thread runs again.  How many GiB you need 
>>> depends on your configuration--number of capture cards and bitrates--but 
>>> you should do fine with less than 3, even for a multi-capture card HDTV 
>>> setup.
>> Thanks for the information Mike, it explains a lot.  But what I found on 
>> one of my mythtv boxes is very different.  On my MBE I found that I had 
>> 10 GBytes reserved (probably the default).

The default value for "Extra Disk Space" is 1GiB.

>>   What was actually free on 
>> the partition used by mythTV was very close to that.  On my SBE I found 
>> I had reserved 30 GBytes.

Again, the setting is global.  The /only/ way you could make it 
non-global is to hack the database yourself (and then, the configuration 
is not supported so any strange behavior would require your tracking 
down issues yourself and submitting a patch if you want it to be supported).

>>   However, on this box, the partition that 
>> holds the mythtv recordings was at 100%!
>>
>> Even if I look for the difference between the size of all the mythtv 
>> recordings (285811524) and everything on that partition (289565544) I 
>> see less than 4 GBytes not used by mythtv.  That's wayyy short of the 30 
>> GBytes that's not suppose to be used.
>>
>> And even if the 10 GByte setting on the MBE "trumps" the setting on the 
>> SBE like you said above, the 4 GBytes not used by the SBE Mythtv box is 
>> still wayyy sort of where it should be.
>>
>> Is there somewhere else I should look?  Or is this a bug?
> Following up...
>
> Looks like everything that was recorded on the SBE mythtv box was set to 
> never auto expire.

Which would mean that setting--which is on the "General (AutoExpire)" 
page of settings--would be ignored.  :)

>   I turned ON auto expire on a number of shows and 
> changed the MBE mythtv box from preserving 10 GByte to preserving 30 
> GBytes of free disk space.

Did it actually say 10?  It /is/ a global setting.  I can show you the 
code...

static GlobalSpinBox *AutoExpireExtraSpace()
{
...
}

Notice the word, "Global" in there.  :)

>   That matches the SBE mythtv box.  Overnight 
> the two boxes have deleted enough auto expire recordings to make 30+ 
> GByte head room on each box.
>   

Which is exactly what it should do.

> But why do all the recordings on the SBE mythtv box have the auto expire 
> turned off?

Do you mean, "Why do all the shows recorded by the SBE become recordings 
set to never auto-expire?"  If so, auto-expire is specified by the 
recording rule (and any show recorded as a result of that rule gets the 
auto-expire setting specified by the rule) but can be manually changed 
by the user (i.e. on Watch Recordings, through the INFO menu/Action 
popup).  So, either your rules specify that auto-expire should be 
disabled or someone changed the value after the shows were recorded.

Mike