Incorrect drive space report for UNC video dirs

[Opus4]

Does anyone here have their video directories set as UNC style ("\\computer\path"), rather than "drive:\dir"? I just tried changing my video dirs to use UNC (can change dir naming style w/o losing any recordings), but when I did that, the total overall video disk space (used + available) and space used both showed up incorrectly, as if the UNC path dirs values had been removed from the sums. However, the total space available for new recordings was still listed correctly.

Any ideas why this would happen or how to fix it?

- Andy

[stanger89]

That may be a Windows limitation, I know when I do properies on a UNC drive (\\northwood\d$, my Sage recordings dir) from my laptop, I get a generic folder properies dialog. When I go to a mapped drive (z: which is mapped from \\northwood\z$) I get the drive properies dialog.

It occurs to me that this may be the source of a number of the mysterious "Out of disk space" problems we see around here.

[Opus4]

I noticed the lack of size reporting when browsing network dirs too, but was hoping there was something to be done about it.

Originally posted by stanger89
It occurs to me that this may be the source of a number of the mysterious "Out of disk space" problems we see around here.

Yes... I was heading in that direction too, but wanted to see what was said about the lack of space reporting. The next time this came up, I was going to ask what dir naming style was used. I don't remember if this came up in any of those previous threads.

Maybe I'll try mapped drives & see if that works better.

You can change the dir access style w/o losing recordings & even move recordings from one video dir to another (file moving is best done while SageTV is not running), so I wanted to try changing the dir naming style to see about making them appear 'local' on my client. Maybe mapped drives will work better anyway.

Moving files & dirs seems to be a fairly common question, so I was going to add that to the FAQ when I'm comfortable with it.

- Andy

[Opus4]

More info... Maybe it IS getting the correct disk space information, but its own recordings are throwing it off a bit? I have a small partition that only had 2 shows on it, so I played around with that video directory some more.

Changing it to a mapped drive (same on both systems of course) had the same result as using the UNC path -- the space used went down. But, then I noticed it was by the size of those 2 recordings. Switching to UNC had the same result. The 2 files were still in the list of recordigns & would play just fine.

After removing those files, mapped & UNC video dirs showed the same space usage reports as the actual path name.

In all cases, the space listed as still available remained the same correct value.

Maybe it isn't counting the files as part of the used space unless they were recorded with that dir naming style. Or, maybe the server needed to be restarted, but I thouht I tried that with UNC last night. I'll try some more of that later.

- Andy

[Opus4]

I finally had a chance to close SageTV, move some files into the video dir that now uses UNC style naming. After restarting SageTV, the space reports were the same as before, so all it required was a restart to get the files marked as belonging where they were moved, or belonging to the new style of referencing the video dir.

So... dir renames can be done while SageTV is running & file moves realy ought to be done while it is not running, but a restart ought to be done regardless to get everything back into sync.

Maybe others already knew this, but I wasn't clear on it yet.

- Andy

[stanger89]

You lost me somewhat, did you ever figure out if you can get proper free/total space reported when using UNC paths?

[Opus4]

Oh -- yeah... "the space reports were the same as before" was supposed to mean that the space was properly reported after restarting. I guess "same as before" isn't very clear, is it?

BTW: I think I prefer UNC vs. mapped drives... unless someone knows a reason not to. It just seems easier not to have to bother with mapping.

I guess I'll go work on a FAQ entry for file moving & directory renaming.

- Andy

[insomniac]

Opus=FAQ king!

my vote is for UNC. Back in the day, it was referenced by Jeff that we had to use mapped drives in order to make sage recorder network encoders to work. That was quite ugly(according to me). The day that I actually tried to use unc and it worked, was a happy moment for me

the little things...

[Opus4]

Originally posted by insomniac
Opus=FAQ king!

Hey! Watch that name calling... that one doesn't sound too good.

- Andy

[insomniac]

Originally posted by Opus4
Hey! Watch that name calling... that one doesn't sound too good.

- Andy

Hah! If it sounds like im trying to label you into a corner so that you feel obligated to make more great FAQ's that users can read and not suffer as we did in the beta days; guilty!

better you than me :P


and yes...the duality of it all is pretty funny. The question is what are you FAQ King?