task.pickle in backups

[sussjb99]

Hi

I noticed that in your motion eye general backups you are including the file "tasks.pickle". I understand that capturig this transitory type of data might be helpful to developers, however I would suggest that from a user perspective that restoring transitory information might be less then ideal.

Restoring tasks.pickle can resurrect tasks that no longer make sense.
Examples of what could go wrong:

• It tries to upload files to a storage location that no longer exists
• It attempts to process motion events from a camera that isn’t connected
• It resumes a cleanup job on a directory that’s empty
• It retries a failed upload from months ago
• It schedules duplicate tasks because the new system already created fresh ones
  None of that is helpful during a clean restore.

Thanks

[MichaIng]

Okay, I see it now, this is just temporary data, not necessarily needed even on a server restart, definitely not for a backup.

Tasks are stored to the config dir: https://github.com/motioneye-project/motioneye/blob/dev/motioneye/tasks.py#L139

The backup just zips the whole config dir, as long as it has not above 100 files content: https://github.com/motioneye-project/motioneye/blob/dev/motioneye/config.py#L1981

To me the best solution seems to not store tasks in the config dir, they just do not belong there by logic. We could instead choose:

• The media_path, default /var/lib/motioneye, a sub dir of it.
• The run_path, default /run/motioneye, usually a tmpfs, potentially cleared on service restart, not with our default systemd unit, but it is generally intended to contain only data relevant for the current process session.
• TMPDIR//tmp, usually a tmpfs, meant for shorter-term temporary data

/tmp is probably too volatile and feels too public (even when using a subdir), media_path is not exactly the wrong place to store such data, but IMO run_path fits best. I am not sure about the repetitive task schedules at the moment, i.e. how long intervals can be, and how relevant it is to keep those intact throughout reboots, but I cannot imagine that it is important, at first glace. Happy for input.