[mythtv-users] Observations - Delete recordings not freeing disk space

[Eric S]

Michael - 

I started the thread a couple weeks back,  from your description of
your problem(s) you are not experiencing the problem that I was
describing.  When the backend is not releasing files for deletion  you
will not recover any significant portion of that file space until the
backend is forded to release the files (usually by a backend restart).
 Occasionally you will see 10-30K free up, possibly due to the
thumbnail being deleted.  It will not however free 2.5 GB from the
deletion of a 3.9GB recording if your are having the issue I was
(still am, even with NFS mounted frontend).

The main problem you are describing (as others have noted) is centered
around root allocation on your partition.  This causes the Free Space
in Myth not to match the 'df -h' free space.  If you are running your
system nearly full you will also experience negative space available
in Myth due to this.

If you have a dedicated partition for myth recordings and media (not
used by system) you can free this reserved space by using tune2fs or
similar depending on your filesystem of choice.  Once the reserved
space is released (on dedicated media partions only!) my Free Space in
Myth matches my 'df -h' exactly when my backend starts or is forced to
release deleted files.

Finally I will take a moment to ask my related question again:
    Backend:  Debian w/2.6.8  dedicated media partition (Ext3) exported via NFS
    Remote Front End:  Debian 2.4.25  media partition mounted via NFS,
user/group permissions match between FE & Server.
The front end gives every indication that it using NFS, i.e. lsof on
FE shows open file via NFS mount point.

When recordings are deleted the backend is still not releasing deleted
files until it is stopped or restarted.  As shown by 'lsof -c
mythbackend'

I was told NFS would fix this issue with a remote frontend.  But no
joy here . . .  any advice?

-Eric