[mythtv-users] combined myth/server

[Josh White]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 3:58 PM, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:

>  On Wednesday 21 April 2010 01:03:44 pm Indulis Bernsteins wrote:
> > >Oh, and do yourself a favor and use a separate disk for the OS and
> >
> > database.
> >
> > >I didn't do that the first time out and ended up having to change things
> > >around. An old 40G IDE drive worked great for that, then I dedicated the
> > >500G SATA drive to recordings and solved some irritating drop-outs in
> > >recordings. Don't skimp on RAM either, particularly if you are going to
> > >attempt an FE install on that box as you will want to dedicate 512M to
> >
> > video
> >
> > >for VDPAU.
> >
> > I have been running for a couple of months on one drive- I use LVM to
> > "split up" the drive into separate OS and data partitions or Logical
> > VOlumes (like disk partitions but in a nice flexible way cf PITA disk
> > partitions).  Nice because you can migrate them between drives, shrink,
> > grow (as long as filesystem you choose can do likewise).  This is a 1TB
> > SATA drive 3 Gbps and it can record 3-4 digital broadcasts at a time (and
> > do some web surfing) with no problems at all- have never had a
> > stutter/glitch.  I am using XFS as the filesystem tuned up as documented
> > in the mythtv wiki.  This probably makes a big difference compared to
> > ext3/4 etc- especially cluster size.
> >
> > Actually the LVM is on top of RAID ("md" s/w RAID done by the Linux
> > kernel) but I haven't set up the 2nd drive as a mirror yet- just noticed
> > it the other night! I am tempting fate now...
> >
> > If you use LVM then once you get a 2nd drive you can set up a "pending
> > mirror" RAID10 on it, then use LVM to just migrate your data to the 2nd
> > drive.  Once done, set up mirror on 1st drive, and let "md" synchronise
> > the two!
> >
> > I dont agree with using an old 40GB drive as drives have a shelf life,
> you
> > are asking for trouble using an old drive.  IMHO...
>
> True perhaps, but I think you are also asking for problems if you have your
> OS/database and video storage on the same spindle, regardless of partitions
> etc. You want them on different devices, spindles, drives or whatever you
> want
> to call them. Having them on separate partitions doesn't help, at least in
> my
> experience.
>
> Heavy database usage takes a lot of drive action, and if you are
> reading/writing many HD streams at the same time this can cause trouble.
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At this point, it would seem important to define "heavy" and "many" in this
context, as it could be causing people to purchase/run power consuming hard
drives unnecessarily.  Has anyone ever done a back to back test showing that
sharing a spindle will cause this problem, and has it been done recently
with modern hardware?  Just because it was a good idea 6 years ago, doesn't
mean it will always be. That being said, I keep all my OS/Database installs
separate from my recordings, and will likely continue to.
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