Configure the Media Cache Storage on Linux

It is recommended to store media on a drive other than your system drive, ideally a direct attached storage (DAS) device or a storage area network (SAN). You can store media on the system drive but performance will not be as good, and is not a recommended setup.

Note: XFS is the recommended filesystem for a storage connected to a Linux workstation, but you can use another filesystem. In addition to implementing POSIX file system semantics, such filesystem must support both hard and symbolic links, 64 bit file sizes and offsets, direct I/O, and timetamps with at least 1 second precision. Finally, directories must support at least 4 billion entries.

Configuring the Media Cache storage:

  1. Ensure the disk array or SAN storage used for the Media Cache is connected to your workstation and powered up.
  2. Boot your workstation and log in.
  3. Open a shell and log in as root.
  4. Open the Service Monitor. Type: 
    /usr/local/bin/ServiceMonitor
  5. In the Service Monitor, open the Components tab and Stop Stone+Wire. Wait for the Status light to turn red.
    Note: Some other components' status light might change to red: this is normal behavior.
  6. cd to /usr/discreet/<product>/bin/
  7. Launch the Setup application. For example, for Flame, type: 
    ./FlameSetup
  8. In the Media Storage tab, click Add and follow the instructions.

    If you need to create mount points for your media cache storage, a procedure below shows you how to do this.

  9. Once the storage appears in the Media Storage list, click Apply.

    The setup application restarts some services.

  10. Close the Setup application.
  11. In the Service Monitor, open the Components tab and Start Stone+Wire. Wait for the Status light to turn green.
    Note: Other components' status light should change back to green. If not, Start them.
  12. Verify that the new media cache storage is available. In the terminal, type: 
    /usr/discreet/sw/sw_df

    Any project created in your application after this point can now use new media cache storage. Any pre-existing projects are unaffected by this setting and remain associated to their respective partitions.

Creating one or more Media Cache storage directories:

  1. If a mount point for your storage does not exist, create one, for example: mkdir /mnt/SAN1. Mount the filesystem to the newly-created directory. To mount it at boot, update /etc/fstab.
    Important: Do not use the reserved word stonefs as the name for your mount point directory.
  2. Create the Managed Media Cache directory on the mounted filesystem, in a directory named after the workstation hostname. The Managed Media Cache directory should be named after the partition name (by default, partition 7, or p7). For example, if the filesystem mount point is /mnt/SAN1, your workstation hostname is adsk0, and the partition name is p7, type: mkdir -p /mnt/SAN1/adsk0/p7
  3. Set the ownership for the directory to the root user. For example: chown -R root:users /mnt/SAN1/adsk0/p7. Set permissions for the directory to be readable, writable, and searchable by the owner and its group, and readable and searchable by all. For example: chmod -R 775 /mnt/SAN1/adsk0/p7