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[fraac]

The config I use has this:

//This will stop SourceTV from auto-recording demos. Its advisable to leave this off so you don't
// end up with massively laggy servers and 500MB demo files that are 36 hours long.
tv_autorecord "0"

But I think Omni said it actually isn't a problem to leave this on. What's the deal here? I would really like to have demos recorded automatically, just because I would forget otherwise.

[DeadlyAvenger]

Yeah, there used to be a plugin that would automatically start/stop recording demos that you could add as a server side plugin but it no longer works or is supported when I checked it a couple of months ago.

The recorder will record *everything* - which means that it will record your server overnight while nothing is happening and the server is empty and yeah - this can cause pretty big log files - for example some of the log files on our Server #2 at the moment are 1Gb in size. I think this is also often the cause of map lag - reloading the map will start a new demo file.

It's a real shame the tv recorder plugin stopped working as this had some really nice features like being able to choose where the log files were saved and only recorded 'matches' when there were people on the server.

If you're forgetful (i.e. can't remember to rcon to start/stop a demo recording) then set it to 1.

Swings and roundabouts...

On
+ Don't have to start/stop demo recording manually
+ You can be confident that everything is being recorded
- Server disk space
- Have to clear out the log files every few months
- Can cause map lag, requiring a map reload
- If you don't reload the map before a match etc. you will have to search through the log file to find the match

Off
+ Better performance
+ Limits disk space usage
(basically the opposite of the above)
etc. etc.

[discordance]

if you enabled the new option to switch the map when the server is empty would that help keep the log files small?

[Jebus]

On the FNR! server I leave it on, but make sure to restart the map before a match so that the demo does not have hours of nothing in it. Then find it relatively easy to purge the irrelevent ones every so often as they are much larger than the rest.

[Omnipotens]

Worth pointing out though that logs should shrink down very well when archived, just like demos. If you really want to maintain a complete log, the odd archive session would do wonders.

A simple way of reducing space used is to ensure you have configs that have the option on, and a config for off. At least if you turn it off, you can't forget to turn it on and you have an easy way of turning it off when idle.