[vdr] Re: Drop support for multiple video dirs? [was: Feature Request]

[Emil Naepflein <Emil.Naepflein@philosys.de>]

Hi Klaus,

> So here's my proposal: if nobody objects I'd like to
> drop the support for multiple /video directories in
> version 1.3. If necessary I can provide a script that
> converts an existing linked /video0, /video1,... structure
> into a plain directory structure.
> 
> Any comments?

I find this a very very bad idea!

I am running a video server with more than 1.2 TB of disk space. It is
currently organized in 8 RAID5 and 2 RAID1 partitions. The first reason
for this is that when there is a filesystem problem (it happend several
times) I loose only the recordings from one partition and not all of
them. The second reason is that with several partitions I am able to
upgrade to larger disks without being offline to long. You know it takes
a long time to copy this large amount of data. So I just can add an
additional disk and can reorganize the RAID5s partition for partition
concurrently to running VDR.

One of the RAID1 partitions is mounted as /video/00 and is so limited in
space that it contains only the small files and links to the real
recordings. The second RAID1 is much larger and is mounted to /video/01.
I have changed the placement of recordings in VDR so that the recordings
are no more spread over all disks, they are filling just the next disk
with enough available space. This keeps the recordings together. So most
of the time all daily temporary recording is going to the first RAID1
partitions. If there isn't enough space available they spill over to the
first RAID5 partition. Recordings that I want to keep permanently are
cutted. During cutting they are also placed on the RAID1 disks. After
cutting I use my tool vdrmigrate to move complete recordings to the
RAID5 partitions starting from the highest video directory with enough
space to hold the complete recording. All the files belonging to a
recording, except resume.vdr are replaced with symbolic links in
/video/00. With this I have the complete recording on one partition and
the RAID5 partitions are only read most of the time except when doing a
migrate. This keeps the risk of filesystem corruption low. If the
symbolic links on /video/00 would be lost then my tool vdrcheck will
recreate the links.

This all helps to keep the consequencies of disk and filesystem failures
to a minimum. Putting all data on one large filesystem placed on a RAID5
would call for total loss of data in the case of problems with
filesystem an disks.

Anyway, everybody who wants to have a single /video without symbolic
links can have this today. There is no need to drop multiple directory
support in order to get this. In my opinion dropping multi-directory
support is a step backward. 

I would be more interested in getting the functionality I currently have
with my tools integrated into vdr to improve reliability and
availability. 

Please reconsider your decision.

Emil


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