Waveform Data Saving

Technical Support
1

Hi is it at all possible to override the 360 day limit on data storage set on the web front end?
By changing this setting on the terminal, perhaps?

The 360 day limit makes sense if an external USB stick /SD card of 8GB is being used. But if a bigger one is used you should be able to store more no?

I have bought bigger storage SD cards but now it seems a waste if I can’t store more than 360 days.

2

Hello, just wondering if I posted to the wrong thread? Or is this a silly question with an obvious answer?

I thought this might be of interest to others as anyone deploying in a remote areas would probably want to have the option to store to an external SD card which is larger than the ~4GB storage available in the microSD card provided, in case of difficulty of access to the RS over a long period of time.

Having a maxium limit of 360 days to store data seems a bit random.
The 8GB card housing the OS leaves around 4GB of storage space equivalent to
~266 days for a 1D RS (based on ~15Mb/day)
~88 days for a 3D RS
So if you were to set storage to 360 days you would still overload and crash the OS eventually.

So you expand this by mounting another memory card, which the documentation explains how to do.
https://manual.raspberryshake.org/usbsds.html#usbsds
However why would you go through the bother of expanding the storage if there is a random limit of 360 days to store data?

I bought and mounted 16GB and even 32GB microSD cards but now I don’t know how to get round the 360 day limit. :confused:

Thanks in advance for any ideas!

3

hi mdpw,

i agree that the limitation of 360 is a bit arbitrary, but this was set back in the beginning, many years ago now, when the use case for storing such a large amount of data did not yet exist. we will have a look at adjusting the code to be more intelligent about how this is handled.

in the meantime, you can get around this limitation by directly modifying the configuration file storing this value:

  • modify the single value in the file /opt/settings/config/ARCH_KEEP.txt to be the number of days you would like to save
  • followed by a reboot

but be warned: if you save any modifications via the front-end, your value will be over-written, where the new value will, upon system restart, have immediate effect.

hope this helps,
richard

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4

Thanks Ivor, thats very helpful.

I can see it is a bit precarious so I’ll have to be careful not to press Save and Restart on the DATA tab in the http://rs.local/config page, even if it is to toggle the data forwarding on or off. Or, if I do, remember to quickly correct the ARCH_KEEP.txt file via the terminal.

Thanks

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5

hi mdpw,

there is a better way to prevent this configuration file from being overwritten: make it immutable.

log into the Shake and execute the following command:

> chattr +i /opt/settings/config/ARCH_KEEP.txt

in this manner, no matter what happens in the front-end, the file’s contents cannot be modified.

cheers,
richard

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