[mythtv-users] Is there a good way to balance tuner use?

[Michael T. Dean]

On 03/20/2014 09:35 AM, Phil Bridges wrote:
> I a master backend and a slave backend, in addition to two HDHR 
> Primes.  Currently, I have one Prime's tuners on my Master frontend, 
> and one on the slave backend.  I have the tuner numbers staggered, 
> such that the 1st recording tuner is on my slave, the 2nd is on my 
> master, 3rd is on the slave, etc.  The LiveTV tuners are in reverse 
> order.
>
> What ends up happening now is the majority of shows record on my slave 
> backend this isn't a problem, *except* it causes my slave's recording 
> drives to fill much quicker than the master, which could end up 
> inadvertently auto-expiring shows.  I have three hard drives in each 
> machine - the master's drives have ~300G free on each, while the 
> slave's drives have ~100G free now, and shrinking.
>
> What is the preferred method to set this up such that my hard drives 
> are used more equally across both machines?  Would it help to NFS 
> mount the master's drives on the slave machines and add those to the 
> storage group?

You could.

Alternatively, just go into mythtv-setup every once in a while and 
switch the Live TV and Schedule Order of your capture devices.  If you 
invert them occasionally, it will invert the recording load.

Or, to try to balance it better in the first place, set the order such 
that the first is on the master, then the next 2 on the remote, then the 
final on the master.  This is /much/ better than M/S/M/S for ordering 
because the probability that the first tuner will be used during 
recording is high, that the 2nd will be used is slightly lower, the 3rd 
even lower, and the 4th the least.  So, given that N1 means the number 
of recordings from tuner 1, N1 + N4 is likely to be closer to N2 + N3 
than would be N1 + N3 vs N2 + N4.

Mike