[mythtv-users] Where is that "keep this much HDD space free" setting???

[stuart]

Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 12/15/2008 06:51 PM, stuart wrote:
>> Where is that "keep this much HDD space free" setting???
>>
>> I have a MBE and a SBE running.  The SBE is at 100% (again!).  I 
>> remember setting this "keep free" value on one of the machines (I had 
>> thought the MBE).  But I don't remember under which menu I found it.  I 
>> have looked in both the front-end menus and the setup menus.
>>   
> 
> In mythfrontend settings:
> 
> Extra Disk Space
> Extra disk space (in Gigabytes) that you want to keep free on the 
> recording file systems beyond what MythTV requires.
> 
> in TV Settings|General settings under "General (AutoExpire)" (page 2 or so).
> 
>> Does anyone know where I can set the upper limit of the HDD capacity 
>> that mythtv will use?
>>   
> 
> That's actually a different idea...  You can tell Myth how much space 
> /not/ to use, but can't tell it how much space to use (other than by 
> limiting the space available through partitioning--which, IMHO, is the 
> best way to keep Myth from using all the space, anyway).
> 
>> Do I have to set this up only on the MBE or do I need to set it on the 
>> SBE as well?
> 
> It's global.
> 
> As a matter of fact, it may be more global than you want.  It applies to 
> /all/ filesystems used by the directories specified in all the storage 
> groups you've defined.  So, if you have a 500GB HDD and a new 1.5TB HDD 
> and you want to make sure Myth only uses half of the 1.5TB, you can't do 
> so by setting the "Extra Disk Space" to 750GB.  If you did so, Myth 
> would expire any recording it recorded to your 500GB HDD.
> 
> So, to keep Myth from using half of your 1.5TB HDD, partition it into 2 
> 750GB partitions--one for Myth's exclusive use and one for "other" 
> programs.  No need to commingle recordings and other non-Myth data.
> 
> Note that you may still want to set "Extra Disk Space" to a few GiB, 
> just so that you can ride out the period between when new recordings 
> start and the autoexpire thread runs again.  How many GiB you need 
> depends on your configuration--number of capture cards and bitrates--but 
> you should do fine with less than 3, even for a multi-capture card HDTV 
> setup.
> 
> Mike

Thanks for the information Mike, it explains a lot.  But what I found on 
one of my mythtv boxes is very different.  On my MBE I found that I had 
10 GBytes reserved (probably the default).  What was actually free on 
the partition used by mythTV was very close to that.  On my SBE I found 
I had reserved 30 GBytes.  However, on this box, the partition that 
holds the mythtv recordings was at 100%!

Even if I look for the difference between the size of all the mythtv 
recordings (285811524) and everything on that partition (289565544) I 
see less than 4 GBytes not used by mythtv.  That's wayyy short of the 30 
GBytes that's not suppose to be used.

And even if the 10 GByte setting on the MBE "trumps" the setting on the 
SBE like you said above, the 4 GBytes not used by the SBE Mythtv box is 
still wayyy sort of where it should be.

Is there somewhere else I should look?  Or is this a bug?

...thanks