[mythtv-users] Fast delete watched recordings

[Michael T. Dean]

On 04/14/2016 10:55 PM, Gerald Brandt wrote:
>
> On 2016-04-14 09:49 PM, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>> On 04/14/2016 10:40 PM, Gerald Brandt wrote:
>>>
>>> On 2016-04-14 08:55 PM, Phill Edwards wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Gerald Brandt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I added a new storage group for my recordings (0.27 fixes), and it 
>>>>> all works fine. However, it is slowly filling up with undeleted 
>>>>> watched recordings. Is there a setting for deleting watched 
>>>>> recordings faster?
>>>>
>>>> They should start expiring/deleting when the amount of space left 
>>>> reaches your minimum free space setting.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> So MythTV will fill up hard drives with unnecessary and unwanted data.
>>
>> Unused storage, like unused RAM, is wasted.  Deleting something that 
>> you could, eventually, decide you want to watch again just because 
>> you watched it once is just plain rude--and wrong--and wasteful if 
>> the storage space isn't being used to store anything else.  After 
>> all, what if I watched a show without my wife and MythTV just deleted 
>> it afterwards and she missed it?
>>
>>> Anyway around this?
>>
>> Delete what you want deleted.  Once you delete a show, it will be 
>> removed from the disk after the time period you told MythTV to leave 
>> them:
>>
>> Time to retain deleted recordings (days)
>> Determines the maximum number of days before undeleting a recording 
>> will become impossible. A value of zero means the recording will be 
>> permanently deleted between 5 and 20 minutes later. A value of minus 
>> one means recordings will be retained until space is required. A 
>> recording will always be removed before this time if the space is 
>> needed for a new recording.
>>
>> in the frontend settings editor under General settings.
>>
>> That said, I'm pretty sure this is what you attempted to ask the 
>> first time around, but since you said, "filling up with undeleted 
>> watched recordings," people assumed you meant that the recordings 
>> were marked as watched, but you had never deleted them.
>
> I'd rather have watched recordings auto delete after a period of time 
> (not based on disk usage), much like manually deleted recordings.  
> Filling my hard drive with junk is a waste.

Oh, so you really did mean that you're not deleting them and just 
expecting MythTV to know that you want them deleted.  It doesn't because 
removing the recording off the disk means you never can get it back and 
if you ever decide you want it again, you have to either wait for a 
rerun or buy it from Amazon/iTunes/Google Play/... (and not be able to 
watch it in MythTV).  And removing it from the disk does absolutely no 
good if there's nothing else to put in its place on the disk (because 
unused storage really is a waste).

If you want your watched recordings deleted and you can't be bothered to 
actually hit DELETE when you're done with them, you can use 
https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Delete_recordings.py with --watched .  You 
could even put it in a cron job with --force if you really like.  Then, 
your disk won't be filled with unnecessary and unwanted data--it will be 
filled with empty space you can't watch when you have a friend over and 
say, "Hey, speaking of which, I just watched this show that was about 
exactly that, but I deleted it so I can't show it to you.  But, look at 
this--my disk is only 12% full!" and you don't have to go through all 
the trouble of deleting those recordings you really are done with.

Mike