[mythtv-users] Is the GUI slow for everyone or just for me?

[Maarten]

On Thursday 27 May 2004 07:37, Henk Poley wrote:
> Op donderdag 27 mei 2004 02:16, schreef Maarten:
> > On Thursday 27 May 2004 01:38, mark wrote:
> > > On Wednesday 26 May 2004 12:46 pm, Dan Morphis wrote:
> > > > mark wrote:
> > >
> > > Because my system was dropping frames and changing audio speed
> > > recording in MPEG4.  The fact that I started Mythtv at 0.10 recording
> > > perfectly and playing back perfectly in MPEG4, with a low 30% load
> > > roughly, then has progressively deteriorated to 90-95% load with later
> > > builds was lost on the list.  One of the more "in the know" readers
> > > clubbed me over the head and said something like " you fool, don't you
> > > know you're supposed to record in RTJPEG and transcode it?"  Whatever,
> > > at least my shows don't jump anymore.
> > >
> > > And this is NOT a slow system.  It's a AMD 2500+/512mb/7200rpmHD/KT400A
> > > pretty snappy doing anything except myth.
> >
> > I don't know if I can help...  can you benchmark and compare it to
> > something ? By doing a kernelcompile maybe ?  Does bonnie++ uncover any
> > obvious weak spots ?  Have you overclocked it ?  What does acpi report
> > back as system / CPU temperatures ?
>
> I think you lost people here...

Sure, I might have.  But serious problems demand serious measures. You cannot 
drive a nail with a feather. There is no Wizard GUI tool that fixes this ;-)
That said, if you are already dead certain that DMA mode works fine, there is 
indeed no further need to run bonnie++.
And note I did not even mention strace... yet. :-)

> Bonnie++ (or zcav for that matter) doesn't come with suggested settings nor
> really 'noobie' documentation, so...

There isn't much to tweak anyway, except for 'hdparm -m16 -u1 -d1 -c1 /dev/
hdX' (AFAIR, but check those flags...!).  But it can discover a serious HW 
problem.   If the system is as slow as reported I think this may be beyond 
tweaking.  It sounds like... I don't know, a burned CPU, or whatever... no 
idea what might cause slowness like this. Well, CPU cache being off, for one.

Oh, yeah: important: check your IDE cable! (length, any damages, and placement 
(not alongside other cables preferably)) or exchange it to be completely sure

> > You may also want to verify in your BIOS that CPU internal caches are ON.
> > And of course, the obvious -but you checked that I hope- hdparm DMA mode.
>
> Where do you check the CPU cache? cat /proc/cpuinfo didn't reveal anything.
> Or did you mean just the BIOS option?

I meant in the BIOS.  Dunno if you can see it in /proc, or where...

> > For more technically inclined people, it may be insightful to run iostat
> > or other tools from the sysstat suite to see where exactly the bottleneck
> > is.
>
> Maybe it's easier to point to some good 'tweaking Linux' site, there are a
> few.

Ah.  So then why don't you suggest one yourself...?

Besides, the disclaimer "For more technically inclined people" says enough 
doesn't it ?  Sysstat is not simple or easy , but it can pinpoint a problem.

Maarten

> 	Henk Poley <><

-- 
Linux: Because rebooting is for adding hardware.