Question about Alert retention

N

nwh

n3wb
Feb 16, 2022
3
0
Denver, CO, US
When I setup BI 11 days ago, I set the New folder to 100GB, 7 days, move to Stored; and the Stored folder to 500GB, Delete. All BI folders reside on the same drive, and as of right now the entire Blue Iris folder and subfolders consume less than 100GB.

As I have had time, I have been reviewing all of the Alerts (motion triggers) and flagging those of interest. Once I had reviewed all of the clips, I had planned to export all of the flagged alerts.

Today when I launched BI to continue my review (I haven't reviewed for a few days), I tried to go to the Alert timestamp that I left off with and the Alerts list doesn't go back that far; neither does the timeline. The oldest Alert in the list (and event on the timeline) corresponds to the oldest clip that remains in the New folder. It appears that all of the Alerts I had Flagged are gone as the Flagged list is empty (I hadn't gotten to any of the clips that still remain in the New folder).

This raises several questions...

What happens when clips are moved from the New folder to another folder? In particular, are Alerts associated with the moved clips deleted as part of this process? By "Alerts" I'm referring to the references to specific timestamps in the clip files, not actual files residing in the Alerts folder. If not, why are all of the alerts associated with clips that were moved missing? Is there another setting controlling this?

Is there a limit to the number of Alerts that can exist in a specific clip, or across all clips?

I don't see any reference in the BI console to the clips that were moved to Stored although they do exist on the drive. Is any information about these clips retained in the database? Is there any way to access clips stored in folders other than New?

It was my understanding that Alerts are not deleted according to the settings under Storage > Alerts as long as the parent clip still exists. Is that not the case? I'm running 5.9.9.0.
Alerts being deleted and not moved
Jan 30 2023
I got confirmation from Blue Iris support that what I was observing WAS how the software worked. That is, if not saving alerts as files, then the Alerts will be deleted according to the value entered on the Alerts config page. By default that was 7 days, so the furthest back in time for alerts would be 7 days. They said that is changed with the "current release". More specifically: " In the current version, alerts are NOT deleted according to these rules as long as the parent CLIP still exists. Once the parent clips is deleted, the alert age/folder size settings become relevant, as the alert is now "on its own".
Click to expand...
 
You should not be moving files around on the same drive.

The database is known for being poor, so don't complicate it.

Moving files around on the same drive is killing the drive faster and using CPU and possibly corrupting the DB and it repaired/regenerated and lost your older alerts.

Just set Storage to 0.

It can cause other problems as well.

What is the storage for Alerts? Are you saving hi-rez or just to the database? Are you doing any AI and burning the AI to the image?
 
I know it doesn't make sense to move files around on the same drive from a space perspective. My intention is to keep files under New for some as yet to be determined amount of time as I don't know how fast space is going to be consumed, then move them to Stored which will reside on my NAS; for now I let it default to the local drive and just set the timing/sizing parameters to enable the functionality.

There has been a total of 32GB of files that have been moved from New to Stored. I don't want to set Stored to 0 until I do something with the clips that have been moved there or they will get deleted entirely. Can I just shutdown the BI service then move the files from Stored back to New? Will any of the the database maintenance options (e.g., repair/regen, delete/regen, etc.) restore all the motion alerts or will those processes delete all alerts that currently exist? Again, by alerts I'm referring to the motion alert references into the clip files that appear here (image below); I'm not saving hi-res images.
snap200290.png

Alerts storage is 1G, 7 days, delete, but since I'm not saving any alert images this folder is always empty so this setting shouldn't have any impact.

I am not doing anything with AI.
 
Any rebuild of the database will lose all the alert thumbnail pointers to the video file prior to the date of the rebuild - but all the video is still there, just the alert pointers and thumbnails are gone.

Manually moving files around is a recipe for corrupting the database.

The database is very fragile.

The only thing I can think of is moving to stored they are being deleted, either intentionally or by accident.
 
It sounds like you're saying there is no recovery possible. If I rebuild not only will I not gain any alert pointers back, but I will lose all of the alert pointers that currently still exist. I can't see the files in Stored, but I also can't move them anywhere else without corrupting the database. At 11 days in with essentially default storage settings, this is not a good look for BI.
 
Unfortunately that is correct. For as good as BI is, the database is the weakest link in it.

Without seeing all of your settings, the alerts probably disappeared due to a setting issue. Maybe it was a corrupt database and rebuilt, but usually it is a bad setting.

I don't move to stored, so I can't speak to what happens to the Alert thumbnail pointers when that happens, but I have over 2 months of alerts and pointers in my New folder. I wouldn't think that deleting them when moved to stored is the standard though as I would remember if people complained about that.

Even with the fragile database, many here have never experienced an issue with the database and have been using BI for years. The only time I have issues is when I try something "oh what does this do" LOL.

Unless going to a NAS, most here keep everything in NEW and don't move stuff around.

Most record based on storage capacity and not put a time limit. The time limit is either/or whichever comes first.

Most do not use the flagging either. We have seen where people have gone in overload with flagging and then they filled up their drive and wouldn't record anymore because the flagged events do not get deleted per the BI retention settings.

If the event was worth saving, export it out to another drive.
 
100 GB is very very small for NEW. if you want all your files to hang around longer use Terabytes of space for NEW.
I have 3 weeks time from 10/06 on my Calendar to pull clips from. My Alerts folder is 8GB and goes back to 10/06/2024 as well.
I'm allocating about 10 Terabytes on 2 WD PURZ82's.
1730185194632.png1730185242205.png
 
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