[mythtv-users] combined myth/server

[Brian Wood]

On Wednesday 21 April 2010 01:03:44 pm Indulis Bernsteins wrote:
> >Oh, and do yourself a favor and use a separate disk for the OS and
> 
> database.
> 
> >I didn't do that the first time out and ended up having to change things
> >around. An old 40G IDE drive worked great for that, then I dedicated the
> >500G SATA drive to recordings and solved some irritating drop-outs in
> >recordings. Don't skimp on RAM either, particularly if you are going to
> >attempt an FE install on that box as you will want to dedicate 512M to
> 
> video
> 
> >for VDPAU.
> 
> I have been running for a couple of months on one drive- I use LVM to
> "split up" the drive into separate OS and data partitions or Logical
> VOlumes (like disk partitions but in a nice flexible way cf PITA disk
> partitions).  Nice because you can migrate them between drives, shrink,
> grow (as long as filesystem you choose can do likewise).  This is a 1TB
> SATA drive 3 Gbps and it can record 3-4 digital broadcasts at a time (and
> do some web surfing) with no problems at all- have never had a
> stutter/glitch.  I am using XFS as the filesystem tuned up as documented
> in the mythtv wiki.  This probably makes a big difference compared to
> ext3/4 etc- especially cluster size.
> 
> Actually the LVM is on top of RAID ("md" s/w RAID done by the Linux
> kernel) but I haven't set up the 2nd drive as a mirror yet- just noticed
> it the other night! I am tempting fate now...
> 
> If you use LVM then once you get a 2nd drive you can set up a "pending
> mirror" RAID10 on it, then use LVM to just migrate your data to the 2nd
> drive.  Once done, set up mirror on 1st drive, and let "md" synchronise
> the two!
> 
> I dont agree with using an old 40GB drive as drives have a shelf life, you
> are asking for trouble using an old drive.  IMHO...

True perhaps, but I think you are also asking for problems if you have your 
OS/database and video storage on the same spindle, regardless of partitions 
etc. You want them on different devices, spindles, drives or whatever you want 
to call them. Having them on separate partitions doesn't help, at least in my 
experience.

Heavy database usage takes a lot of drive action, and if you are 
reading/writing many HD streams at the same time this can cause trouble.