[mythtv-users] FC4 High Load Average

[Darren Coleman]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org 
> [mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Christian Hack
> Sent: 05 August 2005 11:01
> To: MythTV Users
> Subject: [mythtv-users] FC4 High Load Average
> 
> I recently reinstalled my system from scratch using Fedora Core 4 and
> Jarod's guide (thanks Jarod). Everything installed with basically no
> hitches. The machine is an XP2400 + nForce 1 motherboard + 
> Nvidia GF 440MX
> with 2 Hauppauge Nova-T DVB cards. I'm using the nvidia 
> drivers from atrpms
> and the DVB drivers which came with FC4. 3 x 120GB drives are 
> LVMed to make
> one small system partition (10GB) and one large storage 
> partition. DMA is
> definitely on on all drives.
> 
> Now when watching something and transcoding another program in the
> background I'm seeing load averages up around the 4, 5 and 6 mark. 
> This starts to make the playback framerate stutter a bit. Sound is
> unaffected, but the picture is a bit jerky.
> 
> Just playback of a something currently recording (about 
> 22-25% CPU) results
> in peak load averages up around the 3 mark. It fluctuates 
> anywhere between
> 0.5 and 3 though. No playback (but still recording) and the 
> average drops
> down to <0.1 as expected. From top:
> 
> top - 19:51:20 up 5 days, 10:55,  4 users,  load average: 
> 2.78, 1.99, 2.07
> Tasks:  97 total,   3 running,  94 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
> Cpu(s): 26.3% us,  4.3% sy,  0.7% ni, 66.1% id,  2.3% wa,  
> 0.3% hi,  0.0% si
> Mem:    515184k total,   509140k used,     6044k free,    
> 13300k buffers
> Swap:        0k total,        0k used,        0k free,   
> 166596k cached
> 
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
> 
>  2917 mythtv    15   0  353m 169m  35m S 23.9 33.7 847:10.84 
> mythfrontend
> 
>  2530 root      15   0  142m  69m  21m S  4.3 13.9 127:06.89 X
> 
>  2301 root      16   0  233m  25m  12m S  2.0  5.1  61:50.25 
> mythbackend
> 
>  2921 mythtv    25  10 35432  13m 6472 R  0.7  2.7  27:32.72 
> rhn-applet-gui
> 
>     1 root      16   0  1744  568  492 S  0.0  0.1   0:02.47 init
> 
>     2 root      34  19     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 
> ksoftirqd/0
> 
>     3 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 
> watchdog/0
> 
>     4 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.02 events/0
> 
>     5 root      13  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 khelper
> 
>     6 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kthread
> 
>     8 root      20  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kacpid
> 
>    94 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.02 kblockd/0
> 
>    97 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khubd
> 
>   143 root      16   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:15.39 pdflush
> 
>   144 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:13.49 pdflush
> 
>   146 root      16  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 aio/0
> 
> 
> Before this I had Redhat 8.0 and was using a fairly recent 
> CVS version of
> Myth on the exact same hardware and I never saw these high 
> load averages.
> 
> Any ideas what would cause loads this high?
> 
> Thanks
> CH

Do you have mythfilldatabase running every night?

I've noticed that mythfilldatabase uses practically 100% CPU usage for the
entire time it is running (several minutes on my system).  This would push
your load average up.

Daz