Days retention

[Clutch57]

I only put my camera out on nights when the skies are likely to be clear. I was using the default 14 days and this morning I only have one entry. So it looks like 14 days is date based instead of counting directories for each day. The camera wasn't getting a lot of use as it seemed to go dead on me once I took it outside. It turned out to be a device out in my detached garage taking over the ip address due to some dhcp issues.

`# Set this value to the number of days images plus videos you want to keep.

Set to "" to keep ALL days.

DAYS_TO_KEEP=""
`

I changed the 14 to "" so I'll be self managing for now. What would really be great is if it would see how much storage is left and trim oldest entries to achieve a set value.

Thanks for considering this,

Clutch57

[EricClaeys]

@Clutch57 Sorry, I had to laugh to myself when you said you only had one entry in the last 14 days. I won't tell you it's been clear at my observatory for almost a week straight.

Interesting idea. The user would have to specify a cutoff - either a % disk full or an amount of MB / GB free, then keep deleting the oldest days until the system was under the limit. That would be somewhat complex to implement and I fear that might be too complex for many users, especially if they use both DAYS_TO_KEEP and WEB_DAYS_TO_KEEP.

Would it meet your needs if DAYS_TO_KEEP keep the last 14 (or whatever you set it to) days, rather than subtracting 14 from the current date and deleting anything older than that? In your case, it would keep 14 days even if the earlier days went back a year.
This is still more complex than the current implementation, but is probably do-able.

[Clutch57]

"Would it meet your needs if DAYS_TO_KEEP keep the last 14 (or whatever you set it to) days, rather than subtracting 14 from the current date and deleting anything older than that? In your case, it would keep 14 days even if the earlier days went back a year."

That would be fine.

[MMysBelec]

I deal with problem, so WEB_DAYS_TO_KEEP dose not work for me. DAYS_TO_KEEP works, limits the amount of records on the RPi to the specified limit. WEB_DAYS_TO_KEEP not. I have AllSky website on my web-hosting, and records are not deleted, and system stop working after the web space quota is reached.

Any suggestion ? Or is that an bug ?

[troublestarter]

Have you verified the /var/log/allsky.log to see if there is an issue in deleting on your remote website maybe ?

[MMysBelec]

I found this:
endOfNight.sh: WARNING: 'WEB_DAYS_TO_KEEP' set but no website found in '/home/pi/allsky/html/allsky!

Looks like trying to delete files in local website. But I have correctly configured ftp upload that works.

[troublestarter]

Interesting. i think @EricClaeys will have some questions for you ;)

[EricClaeys]

@MMysBelec, per the documentation (see the yellow highlighted box).

I've partially implemented a new REMOTE_WEB_DAYS_TO_KEEP setting to work on a remote Website, but will need to come up with a secure way for the Pi to tell the remote server to delete old files. I have an idea how to do it but it'll take a while to implement and test. It won't be in the next release though.

[MMysBelec]

yes, understand. I´m deleting the files once per month manually for now.

[EricClaeys]

"Would it meet your needs if DAYS_TO_KEEP keep the last 14 (or whatever you set it to) days, rather than subtracting 14 from the current date and deleting anything older than that? In your case, it would keep 14 days even if the earlier days went back a year."

That's already on our to-do list.

I'll need to think about whether to make it a new default or not. I tend not to make "breaking" changes if I can avoid it, but I'm not sure how likely someone specifically wants the last X calendar days. For example, do you really want to show images from a year ago?
One way to handle it is to allow the user to specify "last X days" or "last X calendar days" but on the other hand I prefer not to add another option unless needed.

@ALL,
Thoughts on making it the new default, or an option to specify the action? What do you think most users, who tend not to be technical, would want?

@Alex-developer, your thoughts?