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WebIF Autoshrink

Scuttlebroom said:
No idea what happens when the disk gets full, I too would also like to know the steps it takes, warnings it gives, or does it simply stop recording right in the middle of the programme?
Click to expand...

Yup, it just stops. (Have been there and got that postcard quite a few times :rolleyes:

It records whatever it can until the memory runs out.
On the media list the counter on the top right goes, all too quickly, from showing GBs to showing MBs which count down until it reaches zero MB.
I haven't seen any advance warnings that give you time to take action - if there are any, I missed them, but I think when it has completely run out, a message is flashed up on screen to say that there's no memory space left. No more alerts appear.

After that, any scheduled recordings are fired up and then closed down immediately, so the ring shows blue not red.

Programme titles of scheduled recordings that fail due to lack of memory are placed in folders as usual, with the correct name, date and time - but say zero mins and no channel or programme info attached. These are just placeholders - if you click play, the screen goes black and back to the media list. So you have a marker that showed it tried and failed to record.

A .ts file appears in the file system with the usual format title of Prog-name_date_time, but it is empty, sized 0.0 bytes. It also has the usual sidecar files attached.

So even though the recording failed completely, the filesystem shows:
Prog-name_date_time.hmt, size 14 KB
Prog-name_date_time.nts, size approx 3,000 KB
Prog-name_date_time.thm, size 43 KB
Prog-name_date_time.ts, size 0 KB
(edited to correct my original statement that there are no sidecar files, I was wrong!)

Incidentally, in Web-IF these empty files get a shrunk icon by them instantly, presumably because they meet the criteria of a shrunken file. A little misleading!
 
Cheers DelftBlue that is a very comprehensive explanation! I will have to remember to keep an eye on my pie chart in WebIf as I usually login every day to set more reminders for the news at six (shame this can't be a series reminder!), etc, so hopefully I can catch it if it does start to fill up too quickly!:cool:

Or I could simply start watching some of the films I keep recording, over 40 now and counting!:rolleyes:
 
Black Hole said:
OK, it's finished the run, and every recording in my [FILMS] folder has been converted to a ...shrunk.ts. Presumably auto-shrink renames the recording to its original name wen it has verified backup in the delete folder, and in my case I had to clear out the delete folder to make disk space - but even files processed later are failing to be renamed. Neither is there the shrunk icon listed with them.

What now?
Click to expand...
You're right, it would have renamed the _shrunk ones as soon as it had finished moving the old recording to the bin, but as it couldn't it stopped. I'm adding a disk space check to the auto process so that it won't run unless there is 10% of disk space remaining, but that doesn't help you now!

In your case, those _shrunk files should be the shrunken ones unless they failed to move back properly but if there don't have the icon then I'm not immediately sure what has happened. Do you not still have the original versions of those files alongside the _shrunk ones?
 
So what creates the "shrunk" property that triggers the icon then? Can you add an independent process to autoshrink that does the tidy up when it detects orphaned ...shrunk.ts files?
 
I marked some folders when auto-shrink became available and saw files shrink but found everything on the "Media" button going very slow (or rather "why is this thing so slow now..."). Took off the auto-shrink and goes normal again. Had flagged couple of dozen folders again and got back some 10's of Gb from kids programs, films etc. but again the Media button goes really slowy - like 5-10 seconds with the banner across each change of folder.

Is there anything particular I could / should check if I put auto-shrink on again and it does the same - is it just the webif_auto.log file (currently showing 0 bytes in the webif)? I wondered whether it was choking on one file and keep re-processing.

What is the logic behind it triggering, in this case there was about 15 folders tagged, probably 400 programs, mix of HD and SD and does it have any while a program is recording in one of these dirs?

thanks

Steve
 
I think my stuck ...shrink.ts files must be another "[]" problem - files added to [FILMS] today have been shrunk, with originals in [Recycle Bin], and displaying the same symptoms.
 
dragon-it said:
I marked some folders when auto-shrink became available and saw files shrink but found everything on the "Media" button going very slow (or rather "why is this thing so slow now..."). Took off the auto-shrink and goes normal again. Had flagged couple of dozen folders again and got back some 10's of Gb from kids programs, films etc. but again the Media button goes really slowy - like 5-10 seconds with the banner across each change of folder.

Is there anything particular I could / should check if I put auto-shrink on again and it does the same - is it just the webif_auto.log file (currently showing 0 bytes in the webif)? I wondered whether it was choking on one file and keep re-processing.

What is the logic behind it triggering, in this case there was about 15 folders tagged, probably 400 programs, mix of HD and SD and does it have any while a program is recording in one of these dirs?
Click to expand...
I haven't seen any problems with it slowing down the media list but it obviously does increase disk activity while it's working. The disk should be up to it though (it's specced to be able to sustain >10 HD streams concurrently). Once it's finished it should only process new items in the flagged folders so I would expect it to be okay.

It runs every five minutes and processes as many files as quickly as it can. The log file you mention is the best place to look for diagnostics - it's blanked every time you reboot the box which is why it's zero bytes now.

It checks for active files (being recorded to, watched, copied, streamed etc.) and won't process any files which are in use. It will pick them up on a later run once they become idle again.
 
Black Hole said:
I think my stuck ...shrink.ts files must be another "[]" problem - files added to [FILMS] today have been shrunk, with originals in [Recycle Bin], and displaying the same symptoms.
Click to expand...
I'll do some more testing with [ folders.
 
Thanks, that sounds logical. When something takes > 5 minutes does a second instance trigger though?

I have turned on a few folders again and will see how it goes. There shouldn't be anything new being recorded into the folders which is why it was a little odd, and all entries show shrunk icons in the web-if (eventually with 120 or so Postman Pat in a folder!)

Will see if I can track it down, maybe a dodgy recording it is sticking on.

Steve
 
dragon-it said:
Thanks, that sounds logical. When something takes > 5 minutes does a second instance trigger though?
Click to expand...

Yes, but it exits straight away because the whole process is controlled by a global lock. It should report that in the log file (could not get lock or something similar).
 
Webif 0.9.13-3 includes a number of fixes for directory handling, including a fix for the problem with automatically processing folders named with [].
 
Yep, my problem is cured. For reference, a 2h15m/2.4GB StDef test got shrunk by 25% when deposited in my [FILMS] folder, and the icons are correct.

All I need to do now is a global rename to get rid of the ...shrunk.
 
RFC: does Autoshrink do anything with external drives? If I was browsing an external drive and clicked shrink would it? What about marking a folder for Autoshrink?

I copied a whole folder out to external, and the Autoshrink property went with it.
 
Black Hole said:
RFC: does Autoshrink do anything with external drives? If I was browsing an external drive and clicked shrink would it? What about marking a folder for Autoshrink?

I copied a whole folder out to external, and the Autoshrink property went with it.
Click to expand...

No, it only processes things within the system media root, i.e. "/media/My Video" on a HDR and "/media/drive1/Video" on a HD.
 
Does that apply to the individual "shrink" button as well? Would it be a good idea to suppress the shrink options in the media listings for external drives?
 
Out of curiosity what does the shrink function actually remove? It's great that it'll save so much space but is there any downside?
Thanks in advance
 
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