[mythtv-users] minimum memory on backend?

[E Norm One]

Niels Dybdahl wrote:
>>What's the least memory I can get away with on a slave backend with 2x
>>DVB tuners? The box will likely be a fanless EPIA 5000, and it won't
>>be doing anything else at all...... So, it'll only have kernel, DVB
>>drivers, network (inc WOL), mythbackend.
>>
>>Is 32MB sufficient, or do I need 64 (or 128?) My guess is it depends
>>on how much buffering it's doing... Would be nice to hear form anyone
>>who's actually tried it!
> 
> 
> 
> My Mythbackend (one PVR-250) currently has a VmSize of 176 MB. I would not
> put less into the box, so I would go for 256 MB. The backend has to keep
> pace with the recording cards, and that can be hard if large parts of the
> buffers or code are swapped to disk.
> When I was on MythTV 0.14 and 0.16 the system was not stable when I had too
> little RAM. I am now using 0.18.1 which seems to be much more stable.
> I am running both frontend and backend on the same PC, so I have 512 MB in
> my box.
> 
> Niels Dybdahl
> 
Normally i run 512Mb i one of my SBE (pvr 250 & pvr 350), but as an 
experiment i've put in 256Mb and after a week my 'top' status looks like 
this:

Tasks:  59 total,   2 running,  57 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  4.3% us,  4.0% sy,  0.0% ni, 88.8% id,  0.0% wa,  1.0% hi, 2.0% si
Mem:    254868k total,   250944k used,     3924k free,      868k buffers
Swap:   488556k total,      152k used,   488404k free,   197776k cached
...
9081 mythtv    16   0  119m  18m  10m S  0.0  7.3   0:11.65 mythbackend
....

It's a minimal configuration (no X running), it is just running 
sshd,ntpd,mythbackend and syslog-ng.

So, yes. I would say that 256Mb is needed for a smooth operation.