Only getting 2 minutes of recording and a single row entry in the GUI

[nh2]

First, thanks for this software, I'm excited to try it out with my Axis M3024-L camera!

This is probably some configuration problem on my side, but I can't figure it out:

I'm getting only a single "row" in the table of recordings:

The recorded streams seem to always grow up to 2 minutes, and at the end of each minute they advance by 1 minute.

I'm expecting to see multiple entries as in your README screenshot of the recordings list: https://github.com/scottlamb/moonfire-nvr/blob/3739e634abe10f2e5b16e5d6e5e4b6fa6863abf5/screenshots/list.png

And the stream recordings on disk don't seem to grow beyond the following:

4.4M	sample-dir/000000010000005c
2.1M	sample-dir/000000010000005d
393K	sample-dir/000000020000005c
512	sample-dir/000000020000005d
4.5K	sample-dir/meta

I've set no recording limits in the config:

Am I missing something?

(Using moonfire-nvr-v0.7.17-x86_64 on Linux.)

[nh2]

The logs say

sample-dir: added 4M 481K 842B in 1 recordings (1/94), deleted 4M 350K 643B in 1 (1/93), GCed 1 recordings (2/92)

but I don't get why it does that deleting/GCing, given that I've set no limit in the config.

[nh2]

I have the suspicion that the default 0 doesn't mean "unlimited" but somehow 2 * flush_if_sec or something like that.

If I set a non-0 limit, e.g. to 100G, it works as expected.

So probably 0 needs to be fixed to actually mean unlimited?

[scottlamb]

You're right that 0 means 0 bytes of flushed, undeleted recordings (plus some bytes of unflushed recordings and some bytes of recordings that are in the process of being deleted), rather than unlimited.

What would you expect "unlimited" to do when running out of disk space?

Currently recording will essentially hang, which is not so great. That's why it enforces that the limits for all the streams in a sample file directory sum to no more than the available disk space in that directory and why the install guide recommends going a bit lower:

moonfire-nvr/guide/install.md

Lines 283 to 298 in 424d61f

	3. Assign disk space to your cameras back in "Directories and retention".
	Leave a little slack between the total limit and the filesystem capacity,
	even if you store nothing else on the disk. 1 GiB of slack per camera should
	be plenty. This is needed for a few reasons:
	* Up to `max(120, flush_if_sec)` seconds of video can be written before
	being counted toward the usage because the recording doesn't count until
	it's fully written, and old recordings can't be deleted until the
	next database flush. So a 8 Mbps video stream with `flush_if_sec=300`
	will take up to (8 Mbps * 300 sec / 8 bits/byte) = 300 MB ~= 286 MiB
	of extra disk space.
	* If a file is open when it is deleted (such as if a HTTP client is
	downloading it), it stays around until the file is closed. Moonfire NVR
	currently doesn't account for this.
	* Smaller factors: deletion isn't instantaneous, and directories
	themselves take up some disk space.