WHS - Setting up an unmanaged recording drive

[jm9843]

While this topic has been covered for the most part (recently here), the one thing that I haven't seen addressed is what user account the SageTV service utilizes. This doesn't seem to be an issue if you are assigning your unmanaged recording disk a drive letter; only when using the unc path (i.e. \\localhost\RecordedTV). Using the unc path is preferable for migrating recordings between different physical disks, not having to manage drive letters, etc.

The only permissions that I was able get working was by granting full control to the "Everyone" user. This isn't ideal.

Does anyone know how to effectively give permission to only the SageTV service for an unmanaged WHS share?

Thanks.

[gplasky]

You create a user with a password to have the SageTV service log in with. The user should be in the Administrator group and it must have a password. That should be all that you need to do.

Gerry

[S_M_E]

The WHS SageTV service logs on as "Local System Account" by default and maybe for good reason. You could try creating a SageTV "user" then changing the SageTV service to log on as that use and then changing the permission for the "RecordedTV" share to allow the SageTV user access to the share but I'm not sure if Sage will complain about not being logged on as the LSA. It's worth a try but I only use the UNC path when adding files to my WHS shares, which are, of course, managed by WHS. It would probably be simpler to just assign it a drive letter and use it. As Ive said in another thread, my WHS sage uses WHS shares not unmanaged disks but my usage isn't as extensive as others.

EDIT:
I see gplasky types faster than I do. :P

[bigbill]

Don't forget to make sure you set that user to be able to "logon as a service" right in Local Policy. I am fairly sure local system has no issue using UNC paths if they are local to the server. It won't work if you are pointing at something over the network.

[jm9843]

Thanks for the advice guys. I should have thought to check to see if the service was running as the local system account - must have spent too long at the computer.

So after making sure that the local system account had full control to the unmanaged drive, specifying the recording drive by unc path was no problem. However, this thread got me to thinking that I should be running the SageTV service logged in as a local user (specifically created for Sage) so that I can restrict access to certain shares to be read-only. The primary motivation being so that extender users can't delete items from the imported video/music shares.

To summarize my effort in doing so, I've tried the following:
- create the SageTV user
- change the SageTV.exe service to log in as the new user, restart the service
- set the new user's permission to imported media shares to be read-only
- set the new user's permission to the recorded tv share to be full-control
- set the new user's permission to the SageTV directory (in Program Files) to be full-control

My extenders are now unable to delete imported videos (good!), and everything looks normal until I try watching Live TV. Doing so displays an error message about the capture device not having acess to the local file system. Because I've given the new sage user full-control to that share (the recorded tv share), I wouldn't expect this to be a problem. Sage correctly shows the remaining space on the recorded tv share and can play back from it (i.e. has read access). Is it possible that there is a service seperate from SageTV.exe that handles the capturing? If so, does anyone have an idea of which service that may be?

Temporarily, I've switched back to running the Sage service under the local system account which fixes the capture error but does me no good as far as restricting the video/music import shares.

Any and all advice is welcome.

Thanks.

[S_M_E]

Stick with the local system account and edit your Sage.properties (or sageclient.properties) file:

video_lib_hide_delete=true

Personally, I would just let the WHS pool manage the drive too. Now that we can use 64K clusters in the WHS pool, I see no reason to use an unmanaged drive in WHS for Sage.

[jm9843]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

Stick with the local system account and edit your Sage.properties (or sageclient.properties) file:

video_lib_hide_delete=true

Is there anything to keep the extender user from going into the options and re-enabling it? Perhaps giving the local system account read-only access to the properties file, leaving the rest unchanged?

Originally Posted by S_M_E

Personally, I would just let the WHS pool manage the drive too. Now that we can use 64K clusters in the WHS pool, I see no reason to use an unmanaged drive in WHS for Sage.

It seems easier to me to have a disk outside of the pool then to use an unsupported configuration. Besides, I'll sleep better at night knowing that the disk migrator service is keeping it's mitts off of the recording drive.

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by jm9843

Is there anything to keep the extender user from going into the options and re-enabling it? Perhaps giving the local system account read-only access to the properties file, leaving the rest unchanged?

I don't think they can enable/disable that in the menu options. I believe they would have to edit the actual file, on the server/client. I wouldn't worry about it unless they go around editing files.

It seems easier to me to have a disk outside of the pool then to use an unsupported configuration. Besides, I'll sleep better at night knowing that the disk migrator service is keeping it's mitts off of the recording drive.

I guess it depends on your comfort level but using unmanged shares and SageTV in WHS is technically unsupported, by MS, too. I've never had a problem with demigrator on my recording share, since I turned off duplication for that share. Also, since the November update the D drive is no longer used as a landing zone.

YMMV...

[psklenar]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

... Also, since the November update the D drive is no longer used as a landing zone.

In that case, is a D: hard drive partition required at all then?

Also, can the drives in the pool be of varying sizes? Or do they all need to be the same size?

Thanks!
pat----

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by psklenar

In that case, is a D: hard drive partition required at all then?

It's needed for tombstones, backups and on single drive WHS installs. Also the free space on "D" is used by the pool but only when the other drives are full. Tombstones are very small and that's why you don't want "C" or "D" formatted with 64K clusters. The pool, on the other hand, will generally have larger files, especially if used for Sage.

Also, can the drives in the pool be of varying sizes? Or do they all need to be the same size?

Any size. I use multiple 250G, 500G and 1T drives and my system drive is 320G (resized for a larger "C" Drive) As I run out of space, I can replace one of the 250's with a 1.5T (or whatever) drive, as needed.

[psklenar]

Thank you very much!
pat----

[S_M_E]

No problem. As far as I'm concerned, the old reasons for using unmanged drives in WHS are now obsolete. Let me know how your WHS/Sage box performs if you do the 64K clusters, mine has always been fine. Maybe it's because I use a lot of drives or maybe because my Sage use is fairly light compared to some but, either way, I like WHS/Sage...