[mythtv-users] deleted files not gone, taking up space

David Scammell davescammell at gmail.com
Tue Jun 18 16:18:30 UTC 2013


Thanks Mike. Yes, my situation was unusual, I had an odd bug last year to
do with a sbe and expiring recordings which was happily deleting everything
in sight.

It's been a while since I ran find_orphans.py, I struggled to find a copy
of it when I looked the other day but perhaps I didn't look too hard as I
usually just compare whats on disk to whats in the mysql tables.

ttfn.d


On 18 June 2013 02:19, Michael T. Dean <mtdean at thirdcontact.com> wrote:

> On 06/17/2013 07:17 PM, David Scammell wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> While browsing about myth I happened to be looking at
>> http://mbe-address:6544/ in the information/backend status area I found
>> 'space used by deleted recordings to have a large amount (100GB+). While
>> no
>> significant deletes or auto expires were underway.
>>
>> With a little poking about in the database I found the deletepending
>> column
>> of the recordings table had a number of entries with a value of 1, most of
>> these stretching back to when I had a mythtv bug causing the backend to
>> delete/expire recordings prematurely and then die, last year.
>>
>> I speculate that if a recording is deleted or expired and then the backend
>> fails before the actual recording and metadata are removed, the file and
>> recording row will become orphaned but still take up space on disk.
>>
>> I guess its possible many people would have one of more files like this,
>> if
>> your backend has ever failed then its possible.  This bit of sql should
>> show all pending deletes, those in the delete recording group and any
>> 'extras' you may have:
>> select * from recorded where deletepending=1;
>>
>> I ran into the database:
>> update recorded set deletepending=0 where deletepending=1;
>> [the where clause may well be unnecessary]
>>
>> It did kill my mbe, so I recommend doing this with your backend(s)
>> shutdown. After restarting I can now see all of the recordings which were
>> supposedly removed previously while I had the bug last year, these will
>> shortly expire (being old) and I'll get my space back.
>>
>> Perhaps mythbackend should clear this flag on startup, to make the files
>> re-appear or restart the slow delete process with data from the recorded
>> table where the flag set. I dunno exactly what the correct behaviour
>> should
>> be.
>>
>> I hope this helps someone else. have fun.
>>
>
> This is a known issue that only happens in unusual circumstances (such as
> upgrading to 0.26 with the release version instead of the -fixes version
> that has a fix for a bug that can cause this in some systems with a
> specific pre-upgrade configuration, or doing very bad things like
> hard-killing the backend right after deleting a ton of files).
>
> And, yes, the SQL you issued is a /very/ bad thing to send when (any part
> of) MythTV is running.
>
> There will be a workaround for the issue, eventually, but it's not as easy
> as just resetting the flag on startup.  It's on my TODO list, but since
> this should only happen if people are doing bad things, and since it's
> likely not that much space wasted on any given affected system, I recommend
> not worrying about it too much.
>
> For now, find_orphans.py should be used to clean up any messes, but I'm
> not sure where the updated version that handles it is.
>
> Mike
> ______________________________**_________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/**listinfo/mythtv-users<http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20130618/619fdd31/attachment.html>


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list