Can't delete recordings; disk full

Channels DVR Server
#1

Hello!

I finally ran out of disk space after a couple of months and that’s revealed some shortcomings of the DVR or my understanding of it:

  • When I had a DirectTV DVR, it would record as much as it could until the disk was full, then it would automatically delete older recorded content to make room for newer content. With Channels DVR, it seems like there’s no option to keep as many episodes of recordings as space will allow and then automatically delete them.

  • Now that I’ve run out of space, the first thing I wanted to do was delete recordings I don’t care about. I don’t see an easy way to select multiple recordings to delete at once through the web UI – I can either delete one by one or all the recordings of a show – so I thought I might change the settings for some of my passes to reduce how many recordings stay around (e.g., from “all” to “last 5”). Does this allow the DVR to reclaim space from the extra recordings? I still see the disk say 100% full and there’s nothing indicating that future recordings will proceed.

  • I’ve also tried to delete multiple specific recordings through the web UI but no disk space was freed up according to the Settings page. Is this expected?

I’m running DVR version 2017.05.17.1932.

Thanks!

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#2

The files are purged at set intervals.

#3

Do you know how long the interval is? It’s been over an hour and the disk still shows as full.

#4

afaik, pruner runs every 3 hours.

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#5

Then something is not working in my case. It’s been more than 8 hours and the disk still shows as full. In fact, deleting any recording from the web UI doesn’t actually do anything – the recording doesn’t even disappear in the UI.

#6

What does the Log say?

#7

These are the last few entries in the log (it stops at 12:30). The entries for the few hours before are identical (just the shows are different). There are no entries related to my attempt to delete recordings.

2017/05/18 00:28:36 [DVR] Starting job 1495089300-ch5.1 The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on ch=[5.1]
2017/05/18 00:29:07 [DVR] Starting job 1495089300-ch5.1 The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on ch=[5.1]
2017/05/18 00:30:07 [DVR] Starting job 1495089300-ch5.1 The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on ch=[5.1]
2017/05/18 00:31:08 [DVR] Waiting 5h57m51.670045826s until next job 1495114140-38 I Love Lucy
2017/05/18 00:32:08 [DVR] Starting job 1495089300-ch5.1 The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on ch=[5.1]

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#8

The log is probably full as well.

Can you delete a recording or two by hand off disk?

#9

I will try that tonight.

#10

It is expected that Bad Things™ will happen when the disk fills up. Clearly we need to do a much better job of dealing with this case… it’s been on my todo-list, but kept getting pushed back since no one has run into it yet and it was unclear what the failure modes were.

My original plan was to automatically pause new recordings when disk space was getting full, but it sounds like automatically deleting the oldest (watched?) recordings would be a better solution. There was some discussion about this recently in What happens when out of disk space?

In your case, I suspect as soon as you manually delete some files to make space, things will return to normal and the pruning rules you have setup will also kick in. If not, let me know and we can try to figure out what’s going on (which will give me a better idea of the things that need fixing to prevent this in the future).

#11

Oddly I didn’t find that thread when searching yesterday, but I agree with that sentiment.

For me, the important thing is that the DVR always record the stuff I’m likely to watch (recent airings) at the expense of whatever I haven’t bothered watching yet. I’d prefer to keep the disk full at all times and just have old stuff get kicked out even if unwatched unless it’s important enough to have flagged it as such.

I think having some kind of notification pop up on the ATV app when the disk is almost full would have been helpful to recognize the consequence of not manually deleting existing shows.

#12

While I can understand that some would rather auto delete older recordings to be able to record new requests, I am not in that camp.

When I ran out of recording space on an 8tb disk, my decision was to change recording storage to a new disk (note, I also changed recording engine location ).

Of course, we can use Plex to play from both locations, however only 1 location can be used for bonjour discovery on Channels and thus utilize Channels’ excellent comm skip feature.

Currently, our “less than satisfactory” workaround is to assign bonjour discovery to the engine/disk which contains the recording to be watched.

This is “hokey” at best and is the only gripe I have about Channels. At the very least, I think the ability to add a secondary file location should be added…if not also a tertiary, etc.

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#13

+1 for adding multiple file locations. Still looking for a visual indication in settings on fee space (preferably in recording minutes remaining) would love a pop up in ATV if I go under 2-3 Gig.

It’s a testament to the product that so many are filling their drives with good recordings😀

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#14

I finally got around to deleting some files off of the drive and things are returning back to normal – I was able to delete recordings from the web UI and I saw some background deletions happening. But they’re not happening all at once: only three recordings were pruned in the last half hour.

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#15

I checked again and the rest of the recordings got cleaned up at 11am.

I suppose the only immediate problem in all of this is that the DVR server stops allowing recordings to be deleted when the disk fills up, which leads to a chicken-and-egg situation that can’t be solved without going around the DVR.

#16

I’m encountering the same problem. I’m getting NAS warnings that my drive is getting full. Am I to understand that the DVR software will not manage disk space to prevent full disks? I have to manually delete recordings?

#17

You can edit your passes to tell the DVR how many episodes to keep for each show.

I am testing some changes to auto-delete oldest watched recordings that will be available in a few weeks.

#18

Have you been able to implement this yet? I have run into this problem a few times now where my disk fills up. Like op mentioned I am used to where older recordings are deleted to make room for new content.

#19

Just to chime in here one way I’m seen this handled is to have a “until space is needed” and a “never” option for retention on the pass settings. The “until space is needed” was the default when setting up a new pass. This allowed the DVR to delete the oldest recording of all passes set to “until space is needed” when disk space got low. However, if you wanted to set the pass up to never get deleted due to space issues you could select “never”.

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#20

I would also like a selective "keep" or "never delete" on a per episode basis, not just for the series option.

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