Change Mythbuntu storage

[armandop]

newbie here,

I installed Mythbuntu on a small partition and want to use another partition for storage.

Should I delete the folders under /var/lib/mythtv and mount the storage partition here ?

or delete the folders and create a link to the storage partition mounted somewhere else ?

What about rights as far as the mythbuntu account for writing to the storage partition ?

I'd prefer to keep mythbuntu config to default and modify the underlying filesystem to support my storage requirements.

Thanks

[bah1976]

First, it is not difficult to change myth locations using storage groups (assuming you're using 8.04). Look in the last option during backend setup.

However, I also did not want to change the myth config for storage locations, so I renamed the existing 4 folders in /var/lib/mythtv and created links to my new location. In this setup, my /mnt/bfd is a 1TB RAID5 md array.

So I have this in /var/lib/mythtv:


bruce@MythTV-BE:/var/lib/mythtv$ ls -hl
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 2008-06-11 15:48 music -> /mnt/bfd/mythtv/music/
drwxrwsr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 4.0K 2008-06-11 15:48 music.org
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 2008-06-11 15:48 pictures -> /mnt/bfd/mythtv/pictures/
drwxrwxr-x 3 mythtv mythtv 4.0K 2008-05-15 20:09 pictures.org
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 2008-06-11 15:30 recordings -> /mnt/bfd/mythtv/recordings/
drwxrwsr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 4.0K 2008-06-11 15:30 recordings.org
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 23 2008-06-11 10:40 videos -> /mnt/bfd/mythtv/videos/
drwxrwxr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 4.0K 2008-04-21 08:03 videos.org


and this in /mnt/bfd/mythtv

bruce@MythTV-BE:/mnt/bfd/mythtv$ ls -hl
drwxr-xr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 6 2008-06-11 15:47 music
drwxr-xr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 6 2008-06-11 15:47 pictures
drwxr-xr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 4.0K 2008-06-22 22:49 recordings
drwxr-xr-x 2 mythtv mythtv 23 2008-06-18 08:05 videos


If I remember right, I did something like this for each of the four folders (videos, music, recordings, pictures).


sudo mkdir /mnt/bfd/mythtv/recordings



sudo chown mythtv:mythtv /mnt/bfd/mythtv/recordings



sudo ln -s /mnt/bfd/mythtv/recordings /var/lib/mythtv/recordings

[jwrudolf]

In my opinion the easiest way to do this is to mount your second hard drive as /var/lib/mythtv. Format the hard drive then launch a terminal. Mount the hard drive as /var/lib/mythtv (the default directory). Then make four folders within mythtv: music, videos, recordings, pictures. You need to edit fstab to mount the hard drive upon boot. Then you have to give permission to the mythtv user to write to the new folders. You might also consider creating temp and archive folders in mythtv so that this information is processed on the second hard drive.

Here's some code to do that. Note that your hard drive may not be sdb1. It depends on what the type of drive and how it is connected to the motherboard.



sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /var/lib/mythtv

sudo mkdir music
sudo mkdir pictures
sudo mkdir recordings
sudo mkdir videos
sudo mkdir temp
sudo mkdir archive

cd ~
sudo umount /dev/sdb1



Now you need to check the UUID of the device so you can insert that information into fstab.


ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/

sudo nano /etc/fstab



add the following to the bottom of fstab (the first line is a label so you know which device the uuid refers to so name it whatever you want, hit enter and separate each group on the second line with a single space, don't forget to substitute your devices uuid number in the stead of pasteyouruuidnumberher)


# /dev/sdb1
UUID=pasteyouruuidnumberhere /var/lib/mythtv xfs defaults 1 2


hit ctrl-x to exit, y to save, then enter to return to the terminal

reboot and then we'll give permission for mythtv to use the new hard drive


sudo chmod 775 /var/lib/mythtv/music
sudo chmod 775 /var/lib/mythtv/pictures
sudo chmod 775 /var/lib/mythtv/recordings
sudo chmod 775 /var/lib/mythtv/videos
sudo chmod 775 /var/lib/mythtv/temp
sudo chmod 775 /var/lib/mythtv/archive

sudo chown mythtv:mythtv /var/lib/mythtv/music
sudo chown mythtv:mythtv /var/lib/mythtv/pictures
sudo chown mythtv:mythtv /var/lib/mythtv/recordings
sudo chown mythtv:mythtv /var/lib/mythtv/videos
sudo chown mythtv:mythtv /var/lib/mythtv/temp
sudo chown mythtv:mythtv /var/lib/mythtv/archive



If you elected to create archive and temp folders in the mythtv folder we need to change the archive and temp working paths to reflect the new temp and archive folders


Launch the Frontend and then navigate to archive file setting via the following

Utilities/Setup > Setup > MediaSettings > ArchiveFileSettings

Replace the temp directory with /var/lib/mythtv/temp
Replace the archive directory with /var/lib/mythtv/archive

You should now have the second hard drive configured as the space to work off of and save recordings to as well. I hope this helps.

If anyone else has a preferred method for how to best add a second hard drive, I think it would be great to add it or create a howto sticky where they could be located. The second hard drive is a necessary addition in my book but is not all that easy to do for recent converts to linux (myself included).

[gslauen]

In my opinion the easiest way to do this is to mount your second hard drive as /var/lib/mythtv. Format the hard drive then launch a terminal. Mount the hard drive as /var/lib/mythtv (the default directory). Then make four folders within mythtv: music, videos, recordings, pictures. You need to edit fstab to mount the hard drive upon boot. Then you have to give permission to the mythtv user to write to the new folders. You might also consider creating temp and archive folders in mythtv so that this information is processed on the second hard drive.

Here's some code to do that. Note that your hard drive may not be sdb1. It depends on what the type of drive and how it is connected to the motherboard.



sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /var/lib/mythtv

sudo mkdir music
sudo mkdir pictures
sudo mkdir recordings
sudo mkdir videos
sudo mkdir temp
sudo mkdir archive

cd ~
sudo umount /dev/sdb1



Now you need to check the UUID of the device so you can insert that information into fstab.


ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/

sudo nano /etc/fstab



add the following to the bottom of fstab (the first line is a label so you know which device the uuid refers to so name it whatever you want, hit enter and separate each group on the second line with a single space, don't forget to substitute your devices uuid number in the stead of pasteyouruuidnumberher)


# /dev/sdb1
UUID=pasteyouruuidnumberhere /var/lib/mythtv xfs defaults 1 2


hit ctrl-x to exit, y to save, then enter to return to the terminal

reboot and then we'll give permission for mythtv to use the new hard drive


sudo chmod 775 /var/lib/mythtv/music
sudo chmod 775 /var/lib/mythtv/pictures
sudo chmod 775 /var/lib/mythtv/recordings
sudo chmod 775 /var/lib/mythtv/videos
sudo chmod 775 /var/lib/mythtv/temp
sudo chmod 775 /var/lib/mythtv/archive

sudo chown mythtv:mythtv /var/lib/mythtv/music
sudo chown mythtv:mythtv /var/lib/mythtv/pictures
sudo chown mythtv:mythtv /var/lib/mythtv/recordings
sudo chown mythtv:mythtv /var/lib/mythtv/videos
sudo chown mythtv:mythtv /var/lib/mythtv/temp
sudo chown mythtv:mythtv /var/lib/mythtv/archive



If you elected to create archive and temp folders in the mythtv folder we need to change the archive and temp working paths to reflect the new temp and archive folders


Launch the Frontend and then navigate to archive file setting via the following

Utilities/Setup > Setup > MediaSettings > ArchiveFileSettings

Replace the temp directory with /var/lib/mythtv/temp
Replace the archive directory with /var/lib/mythtv/archive

You should now have the second hard drive configured as the space to work off of and save recordings to as well. I hope this helps.

If anyone else has a preferred method for how to best add a second hard drive, I think it would be great to add it or create a howto sticky where they could be located. The second hard drive is a necessary addition in my book but is not all that easy to do for recent converts to linux (myself included).

When I try this and do chmod I get an error message that the there is no such file or directory. I have the drive mounted but it seems to me that if your creating the directories they are just going to be created in the root and when I try to change permissions the directories can not be found.

Any ideas?

[newlinux]

yes, you should be creating the directories in /var/lib/mythtv. Easiest thing to do is probably a cd /var/lib/mythtv before creating the directories with mkdir.