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ChannelWatch

Disk Space

Disk Space alerts watch your Channels DVR storage and notify you when free space drops below configurable thresholds. Two severity levels let you act early on a warning before a critical condition interrupts recordings.

Set up disk alerts

Section titled “Set up disk alerts”
  1. Open Settings > Alerts > Disk Space and expand the card.
  2. Choose Global or a DVR and enable Disk Space alerts.
  3. Review warning and critical values under Settings > Advanced > Disk Alert Controls.
  4. Select Save and allow the DVR’s Disk Space destinations in Settings > Routing.

Disk alerts are enabled by the Important Only preset on fresh installs.

Severity levels

Section titled “Severity levels”

ChannelWatch uses two severity levels for disk alerts.

Severity Default threshold Emoji
Warning Below 10% free or below 50 GB free ⚠️
Critical Below 5% free or below 25 GB free 🚨

A threshold fires when free space drops below either the percent value or the GB value, whichever is reached first. Critical takes priority: if free space is already below the critical threshold, only a Critical alert is sent, not a Warning.

ChannelWatch alerts settings showing Disk Space warning threshold controls and per-DVR alert guidance
Disk Space settingsUse the Disk Space panel to verify the alert toggle, per-DVR tabs, and threshold controls before tuning repeat behavior. Captured from ChannelWatch v1.6.0 with safe demo data.View full-size screenshot

Notification format

Section titled “Notification format”

These synthetic text examples show the message fields. A warning’s actual values depend on your configured thresholds; the sample 10.8% free value would require a higher percentage threshold than the default, or a matching GB threshold.

Warning alert:

Title: ⚠️ Low Disk Space Warning


Free Space: 200.59 GB / 1.82 TB (10.8%)
Used Space: 1.62 TB
DVR Path: /shares/DVR

Critical alert:

Title: 🚨 Low Disk Space Critical


Free Space: 18.42 GB / 1.82 TB (1.0%)
Used Space: 1.80 TB
DVR Path: /shares/DVR

Both formats show free space, total capacity, the percentage free, used space, and the DVR storage path.

Use Notification Templates if you want shorter wording. Disk percentages in the custom-template context describe used space; the built-in disk message displays the percentage free.

Startup grace period

Section titled “Startup grace period”

ChannelWatch waits until startup has settled before sending disk alerts. If a low-space condition already exists when the container starts, no notification is sent until the startup grace period has passed. This prevents a flood of alerts every time the container restarts on a system that is already low on space.

The default grace period is 10 seconds. This is controlled by ds_startup_grace_seconds in Settings > Advanced > Disk Alert Controls.

Cooldown and worsening logic

Section titled “Cooldown and worsening logic”

Once a warning or critical alert has been sent, ChannelWatch does not keep repeating the same alert unless the condition gets meaningfully worse within that same severity level. Specifically, a repeat notification at the same severity requires both:

  1. Free space has dropped by at least ds_worsening_delta_gb GB or ds_worsening_delta_percent percentage points since the last notification at that severity.
  2. ds_alert_cooldown has elapsed since the last notification (default: 1 hour).

If disk space recovers to normal and then drops below a threshold again later, a fresh alert fires regardless of the cooldown. Escalating from warning to critical also sends a new alert immediately, without waiting for the cooldown.

Advanced settings

Section titled “Advanced settings”

The main Disk Space enable/disable toggle lives under Settings > Alerts > Disk Space. Advanced threshold and timing values are configurable in the web UI under Settings > Advanced > Disk Alert Controls:

  • Warning threshold (percent): ds_warning_threshold_percent
  • Warning threshold (GB): ds_warning_threshold_gb
  • Critical threshold (percent): ds_critical_threshold_percent
  • Critical threshold (GB): ds_critical_threshold_gb
  • Startup grace period: ds_startup_grace_seconds
  • Worsening sensitivity in GB: ds_worsening_delta_gb
  • Worsening sensitivity in percent: ds_worsening_delta_percent
  • Cooldown period: ds_alert_cooldown
  • Optional separate test destination for disk alert tests: ds_test_route_override

Source still reads legacy ds_threshold_percent and ds_threshold_gb as fallback values for the warning threshold when the newer warning-specific keys are absent, but the current settings surface uses the explicit warning and critical keys above.

Testing

Section titled “Testing”

ChannelWatch v1.6.0 has a Diagnostics test-name limitation. Use the command-line fallback below for a disk alert sample. Test notifications insert [TEST] in the title:

Tests send real messages to the configured destination; they do not fill your disk or prove that a real threshold has been crossed.

Title: ⚠️ [TEST] Low Disk Space Warning


Free Space: 200.59 GB / 1.82 TB (10.8%)
Used Space: 1.62 TB
DVR Path: /shares/DVR

If you configure an optional test destination in the advanced disk settings, test alerts go to that destination instead of your normal notification route. If no override is set, test alerts use the normal route.

From the command line:

Terminal window
docker exec -it channelwatch python -m core.main --test-alert ALERT_DISK_SPACE

Troubleshooting

Section titled “Troubleshooting”

If disk space alerts are not arriving:

  • Confirm Disk Space alerts are enabled in Settings > Alerts > Disk Space.
  • Check the Delivery Log and, if needed, send a deliberate test with the command above.
  • If alerts are firing too frequently, increase the cooldown or worsening sensitivity in the advanced settings.
  • If alerts are not firing at all after startup, verify the startup grace period has passed and that free space is actually below a configured threshold.
  • Check container logs for API connectivity errors: docker logs channelwatch.
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