Re: [mythtv-users] Removable storage with MythTV
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 ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Removable storage with MythTV
On Mon, Aug 08, 2005 at 10:45:55AM -0700, Fedor Pikus wrote: > This way, you pull the disk out of source computer, life goes on. You > plug it into destination, RAID reconstructs, now you have your > destination disk updated. You take the drive out of destination, it > stays as the mirror of the source disk until you update it again. Are you using software RAID? Are you on a budget? If so then you can use just two drives total (one per machine), assuming you're willing to leave the playback machine shut down when you go to fetch new shows. Configure both drives with normal Linux and swap partitions and install your favorite distro on each. Then put both drives in one machine and build a mirror array using a large partition from each drive (so they'll have the same serial number). Then split the drives and run both machines in "degraded mode". You can do anything you want on the playback machine while the recording machine fills up the RAID partition. When it's time to copy the data, tell the RAID on the playback machine that the partition is dirty and then shut down and pull the drive. Put the drive into the recording machine and tell it to "hot add" the dirty partition. It will mirror the recording partition onto the playback partition. Now shut down, pull the drive and return home. Your machine should mount the refreshed drive as the recording machine marked it clean again. Rinse and repeat. Since your MySQL database is also on the mirror, your MythTV menu should have all the correct show information. ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Removable storage with MythTV
On 8/8/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, Aug 08, 2005 at 10:45:55AM -0700, Fedor Pikus wrote: > > This way, you pull the disk out of source computer, life goes on. You > > plug it into destination, RAID reconstructs, now you have your > > destination disk updated. You take the drive out of destination, it > > stays as the mirror of the source disk until you update it again. > > Are you using software RAID? Are you on a budget? If so then you can > use just two drives total (one per machine), assuming you're willing to > leave the playback machine shut down when you go to fetch new shows. That's the minimal option, yes. With one more drive, you can have playback machine operational all the time. If the moving drive is hot-pluggable, you don't even need to shut down machines. -- Fedor G Pikus ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.pikus.net http://wild-light.com ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Removable storage with MythTV
On 8/8/05, Ryan Steffes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On 8/6/05, Eileen Webb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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. > > > > Based purely on what I've seen, there's potential for this to work. MythTV > seems to fail fairly gracefully if the file it's looking for isn't found. > On the theme I'm using (not sure if this is true for all themes), the show > name appears dimmer, but not quite greyed out if the file isn't found. > > I'd think to make this work somewhat efficiently, all you'd need to do is > to make a dump of the recorded table, at their place and restore it when you > load the hard drive at your place. Then, optionally, you could tell the > backend at their place to delete all the recordings. > > There may be a reason why this wouldn't work, but I can't think of it off > hand. Another option is to set up a mirroring software raid, and pull one disk out of it. Myth will not need to fail at all, gracefully or otherwise. SoftRAID normally does not automatically add new drives after they fail (removal qualifies as failure in this context) but since you expect it to always "fail" in the same way, wou can set up boot scripts to properly insert the disk into the array. For example, if one computer is always the source and the other is always the destination, you'd set up the source to always add new disk as dirty and treat existing disks as current, and the destination to always treat new disk as current and update its permanent disk. This way, you pull the disk out of source computer, life goes on. You plug it into destination, RAID reconstructs, now you have your destination disk updated. You take the drive out of destination, it stays as the mirror of the source disk until you update it again. -- Fedor G Pikus ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.pikus.net http://wild-light.com ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Removable storage with MythTV
On 8/6/05, Eileen Webb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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. Thanks! Eileen Based purely on what I've seen, there's potential for this to work. MythTV seems to fail fairly gracefully if the file it's looking for isn't found. On the theme I'm using (not sure if this is true for all themes), the show name appears dimmer, but not quite greyed out if the file isn't found. I'd think to make this work somewhat efficiently, all you'd need to do is to make a dump of the recorded table, at their place and restore it when you load the hard drive at your place. Then, optionally, you could tell the backend at their place to delete all the recordings. There may be a reason why this wouldn't work, but I can't think of it off hand. -Ryan ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
Re: [mythtv-users] Removable storage with MythTV
On 8/6/05, Eileen Webb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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. > > Thanks! > Eileen I cannto comment on changing drives between systems but we do run a 300GB Maxtor 1-Touch 1394 drive as storage for MythTV on one of our back end servers. We don't remove it though so it's only part of your solution. For us it was just easier than adding internal storage. It has worked very well for the last 2-3 months. Good luck, Mark ___ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
