[mythtv] Re: New idea for storing recordings to disks

[Joseph A. Caputo]

On Thursday 30 June 2005 1:24, BP wrote:
> Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
> 
> > 
> > ...which is kind of why I put forth the idea of 'slicing' the 
> > recordings  
> > as they're in-progress (see my post earlier in this thread).  It 
> > allows  
> > you to take full advantage of *all* of the space across multiple 
> > mount  
> > points/devices, even though any one of them taken by itself may not 
> > have enough space.  Without the ability to treat a collection of 
> 
> But one of the reasons why people were asking for multiple mount 
> points 
> was for not losing all their recordings if one drive croaked as can
> happen with LVM.  This 'slicing' idea does not resolve that issue and
> makes things very complicated.

Not if you make it so that all 'slices' get recorded to the same 
location, only changing locations mid-recording if the first one runs 
out of space.  This way, you reduce the likelihood that a single 
recording will span multiple locations.  And, if you lose a storage 
device, it's easy to identify which recordings have been partially or 
completely lost and deal with them as appropriate.  With LVM, if you 
lose a disk, it's a real pain in the ass to try and recover files from 
the remaining volumes.

> 
> Simple solution:  If the recorder runs out of space, the recorder 
> exits. 

Already does this.

>  Scheduler sees the recorder exited, attempts to restart it.  The
> recorder code checks the mount points for space, sees none free on
> option one, tries option two.  Just like when you restart the backend 
> in 
> the midst of a recording, you end up with two partial recordings of 
> the 
> same show, both viewable.

This is pretty much how the slicing approach would work, except you 
wouldn't be stopping/restarting the recording, just recording the next 
'slice' to the next available location.

-JAC