[mythtv-users] Removable storage with MythTV

[Kevin Kuphal]

Eileen Webb wrote:

> Hi all,
> I've just started building my Myth system and wanted to run an idea by 
> more experienced users to make sure I'm not crazy.
>
> Here's the story:  I live out in the middle of nowhere where the only 
> TV that exists is satellite (DirecTV, in our area).  I have some 
> family moving nearby who is going to get a system, which by default 
> comes with FOUR set-top boxes!  Four is a lot of boxes for only two 
> people, and they have graciously offered us the use of one of the 
> extra boxes.
>
> So I got this great idea that I'd set up a Myth system at their house, 
> program it from my house (yeah for web interface!), and record myself 
> some TV.  My plan is to have a two or three removable hard drives 
> (actually, just some normal drives that are easy to access) and I 
> would swap them around to record shows.  So stuff would get recorded 
> onto driveA, then at some point I'd come by and swap it with driveB.  
> Then recording could continue on driveB and I'd take driveA home with 
> me and watch it there.  The computer at home would also have Myth, so 
> the file types and arrangements should still work, and I'll get to 
> play with the game emulator, too!
>
> Does this make sense?  Does it seem at all feasible?  From the 
> outside, it seems pretty simple, but those are famous last words.  I 
> would love any thoughts on this plan -- tips from anyone who has done 
> anything similar, horror stories on why I am doomed, whatever.

I'm considering the same thing with my father who gets DirectTV.  My 
thought was to use an external hard disk , not as the primary recording 
device, but as a storage location.  I am planning to use the 
post-recording user job functions to copy the recording to the removable 
disk, and export the SQL needed to reimport the recording to my computer 
(including seektables, etc).  This way, I don't have to worry about what 
happens when things get full as I can let MythTV handle that with 
auto-expire + re-record and I can remove the disk at any time (the 
copy/export will simply fail in that case) for transport.   To handle 
the case of what happens when I remove the disk and miss a copy/export 
operation, I had thought of writing a simple script that I can cron that 
will check the job queue results, look for failed jobs of this type, and 
re-run them on a scheduled basis so that they would be picked up again 
when the disk was reinserted.  Or else I would just buy 2 disks and swap 
them in and out to avoid the problem altogether.

My other thought was to make the remote system a slave backed using an 
SSH VPN type connection and just move the files to my computer 
post-recording and change the hostname in the DB but I'm still not 
convinced that is the best way to go vs. removable storage.

Kevin