[mythtv-users] Very High 'System' CPU Usage - nxtvepg was root cause

Simon Message smessage at t-online.de
Thu Dec 2 21:48:42 UTC 2004


Hi there,
I have been using mythtv for about 2 months. It worked ok, but the performance was not great, this evening I finally tracked down the root cause, so I thought I would post to the list in case anyone else had the same problem. Basically when nxtvepg and mythtv were running at the same time, the idle cpu was 0% and any spare cpu was used by the system process (as shown in top), up to 80% system! Stopping nxtvepg seems to have solved the problem. I have done ABA checks, and I am sure it is nxtvepg with myth together.

nxtvepg is really useful here in Germany though, so I will keep experimenting to see if I can get it to behave. I think some people have managed it. At least I know where to look now. I think others have had this problem also, but I did not see a message on the list with the symptoms so explicitly stated. 

I can now watch live TV, MP4 (standard settings video, slightly better audio) on my AthlonXP 1600+ at 576x576 with 20% idle CPU, impossible before.

Hope this helps someone,
Simon

PS Just for everyone's amusement here are the other things I tried:
    3 different motherboards (latest purchased this evening...)
    CPU upgrade
    RAM upgrade
    kernel upgrade (2.6.x to 2.6.9)
    distro change, Suse 9.1 to KnoppMyth
    IDE to SCSI hard disc
    recording to ramdisk
    different filesystems
    overclocking
    underclocking
    almost every option in the bios
    pci card in every different slot etc etc.
Good job the wife has been away for a couple of weeks...
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