[vdr] Re: VDR-Network-Traffic-Managment

[Carsten Koch <Carsten.Koch@icem.de>]

Axel Gruber wrote:
> 
> Hi all
> 
> Here i use a small VDR-network with one "main-machine" (4 DVB-Devices) and 8 Harddrives.
> 2 Clients with only 1 DVB-Device and mounted the Harddrives from the Main-Machine.
> 
> Everything works fine.
> 
> Now i want to expand the harddrivespace and connect a aditional Server to this Network.
> 
> But now i get problems.
> 
> VDR allways use the /video device wich has the highes space on it. - so if i connect
> the Server to the network (for example as /video9) all Vdrīs only record to this device.
> 
> If i only record 1 or 2 Streams at the same time there is  no problem - but if i
> (and my Brother) watch over the Clients (over the LAN) and the main-Machine want to
> record over the Network i get Problems because the netowrk ist too slow.
> 
> Is there any way to tell VDR that he only shuld use a specifyed number of recordings over
> the network ?
> 
> I know this is a realy specific problem - but i donīt have a solution for it !

Hi Axel,

I was the one who had the idea of the /videoN directories and
back then I talked Klaus into implementing it.
I regret that now and I no longer think this is a good idea.
As you said, vdr always records to the mount point with the
largest available space. This creates a space balance (but
NOT a load balance) between the disks. Also, vdr even splits
one recording among multiple disks - due to the space balance
this happens all the time. This is very bad, because if one 
disk fails one loses all recordings. It also makes it harder
to reconfigure disks.

Consequently, I am no longer using the /videoN feature.
Instead, I have created top-level directories with all my
genres on /video. Some of these point to other mount points:

/home/cko> df -h /video*
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdc1             153G  138G   14G  91% /video
/dev/hdb1             153G  135G   18G  88% /video2
/dev/hdd1             114G   75G   40G  65% /video3
/home/cko> ls -l /video
total 1340
lrwxr-xr-x    1 cko      users          14 Jun  9 21:08 Action -> /video2/Action
drwxr-xr-x   29 cko      users        4096 Jun 15 15:55 Comedy
lrwxr-xr-x    1 cko      users          15 Jun  9 21:08 Fantasy -> /video2/Fantasy
lrwxr-xr-x    1 cko      users          18 Jun  9 21:09 Horror -> /video3/vdr/Horror
lrwxr-xr-x    1 cko      users          16 Jun  9 21:09 Kids -> /video3/vdr/Kids
lrwxr-xr-x    1 cko      users          16 Jun  9 21:09 Misc -> /video3/vdr/Misc
lrwxr-xr-x    1 cko      users          17 Jun  9 21:09 Music -> /video3/vdr/Music
drwxr-xr-x   21 cko      users        4096 Jun 17 14:02 SciFi
lrwxr-xr-x    1 cko      users          15 Jun  9 21:08 Science -> /video2/Science
lrwxr-xr-x    1 cko      users          20 Jun  9 21:09 Thriller -> /video3/vdr/Thriller
-rw-r--r--    1 cko      users     1360780 Jun 17 13:59 epg.data


Maybe a scheme line this would work for you, too?


However, there is one thing I am not sure about:
Klaus, how will the automatic deletion of expired recordings
work in the above scheme?
If, as an example, I run out of space on /video2 or /video3,
will vdr even notice?
And, as another example, if I run out of space on /video and
I have some expired recordings on /video2, will vdr delete
these (which of course will not improve the space on /video)?

Carsten.