[mythtv-users] Wake up disks on events

[mythtv at blandford.net]

Hello,

This is a little off topic, but I am hopeful I will get some good ideas.

I have a few mythtv frontends running minimyth as well as a fedora  9 
backend+frontend combination.

I use hdparm to spin down the mythtv disks when they are not in use.

This is working really well for the most part.  The power consumption of 
my server goes from 185W to 130W when the disks spin down.

When I power on a frontend and watch a show, it takes 10-15 seconds for 
the disks in the backend to spin up.  this causes the frontend to appear 
to freeze.

What I would like to do is add some hooks to help control the disks.
It might be a single daemon or just cobble several things together.

Here were my thoughts:

1) A frontend hook to notify the server to wake up the disks.  The 
frontend could ping a certain port on the server, or touch a file on the 
server to notify it was awake.  The disks will wake up in the time it 
takes the TV to warm up.

2) Wake up 1 minute prior to recording any shows.  I miss 10-15 seconds 
now.  I don't want to tell mythtv to record an extra minute early 
because it causes show overlaps in the scheduler.

3) Check the upcoming recordings and keep the disks spinning if another 
show is starting with X minutes.  Don't spin down the disks if they are 
used again soon.

4) Schedule the database optimize, myth_rename, updatedb, etc 
immediately after the last recorded show of the day so the disks won't 
wake up in the early morning to run those tasks.
.

Has anyone else done something like this or do you have suggestions on 
any of these?

Michael