[mythtv-users] suggested partition size for /mnt/store?

[Bruce Markey]

John Hurliman wrote:
> What is a good suggested hard drive size for the /mnt/store buffer 
> partition? I will be using a dual-tuner setup with an 80gb hard drive, 
> so two recordings could be running simultaneously. What is the maximum 
> size for each of the ringbuffers (is it configurable?) and are there any 
> other buffers or temporary files that should be taken into account when 
> creating this partition. I want to maximize hard drive space for storage 
> while leaving ample space for buffering.

While MythTV settings allow for a different path for the
ringbuffers, it makes more sense to point them to the same
directory as the recordings to consolidate your free space.

> ... Also, the recordings/media will 
> be stored in /home/mythtv; is it worthwhile from a performance 
> standpoint to make /home yet another partition? Or maybe it makes more 
> sense to put the mySQL database on it's own partition and everything 
> else on the / partition. Samba will be running though and I don't want 
> file transfers to interrupt the recording and/or playback.

I assume you are planning to put these all on the same 80GB
disk? Realize that as you place things on different parts
of the disk, the heads need to make longer seeks to read and
write. It wouldn't help to put mysql on a different partition
than /usr and /var of the same disk but it may not really hurt
much.

If you have another smaller disk, you may want to put the OS
on that and mount the whole 80GB disk as your file repository.
That way the heads on the big disk can stay positioned to
stream the recordings while the other disk does most of the
seeking.

> So we may be looking at /, /boot, /home, /mnt/store, quite the partition 
> table!

Not really ;-) Traditional UNIX commonly used /, /tmp, /usr
and /u for home directories. Sun made /home, /var, and /opt
standard partitions choices. I'm used to seeing 6 or 7 different
partitions on UNIX systems. There were good reasons for this
for the hardware of the day but most of these reasons no longer
apply.

The /boot normally is unnecessary unless you have / on some
odd disk and need to put /boot on /dev/hda. With all due
respect to the authors, I don't think /mnt should have
permanent mounts but should be left as a convenient place
for temporary mounts.

So, if you want to put your recordings somewhere under
/home/mythtv and point your ringbuffers to the same dir.

small disk  /, swap, /home
big disk    /home/mythtv

or

small disk  swap, /
big disk    /home

or for just the one big disk

/ (3 or 4GB), swap, /home

If you are using Samba on your home directory, the first
scheme (or variation) prevents Samba from impacting your
recordings.

--  bjm