[mythtv-users] mythfilldatabase stunning my system
M. Scott Doerrie
mdoerri at cs.jhu.edu
Thu Jan 25 20:28:43 UTC 2007
Greg Foster wrote:
> On 1/24/07, Mike Perkins <mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk> wrote:
>
>> Greg Foster wrote:
>>
>>> On 1/18/07, M. Scott Doerrie <mdoerri at cs.jhu.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I have recently had a similar problem with mythfilldatabase and thought
>>>> I'd share my solution here. We have a large channel lineup of over 500
>>>> channels -- not that we get all of them, but we like to see them in the
>>>> program guide because we can order them as desired. Though
>>>> mythfilldatabase may be niced, it is not all that computationally
>>>> expensive. Rather, the updates are IO intensive, and MySQL attempts
>>>> them as fast as possible. This interferes with recording and playback,
>>>> causing all manner of visual artifacts. Sometimes the backend simply
>>>> stops streaming or, less frequently, exits. I thought that increasing
>>>> the mythbackend ringbuffer would be futile since the updates take well
>>>> over an hour.
>>>>
>>>> Since the operations are IO bound, I have installed a 4G drive for the
>>>> MySQL database. The hope was that this would reduce load on the primary
>>>> drive, allowing the backend to continue streaming. Since it is an older
>>>> drive and can not communicate at the same bus speed as the primary
>>>> drive, I placed it on the secondary ATA bus. (This bus also contains
>>>> the DVD-RW, but I doubt I'll be watching DVDs at 5 am when I update).
>>>> This solution seems to be working fine. The frontend will rarely have a
>>>> playback artifact, but they are not present in the recordings.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> [snip]
>>>
>>> Scott,
>>>
>>> Any luck with your changes ? Seeing the same issues here with a large
>>> lineup, to the point where mythweb doesn't come back with the tv
>>> listings before things time out or get ugly.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> mythtv-users mailing list
>>> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>>> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>>>
>>>
>> Possible tangential solution, maybe - move your MySQL database to a
>> different box? Doesn't have to be in the same box as your busy backends.
>>
>
> Yup.. was just thinking along those lines. Stumbled across something
> else... mythweb on my frontend only box responds in a reasonable
> amount of time. I'm starting to suspect my mythweb configuration on
> the backend. Time to dig and compare ;)
>
> Greg.
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>
>
Sorry for taking a while to get back. I've been running this way for a
couple weeks and everything seems fine. I pushed the datadirect update
back to 3 am when I'm usually not watching TV, but sometimes recording
I've not had any recording issues, and even Live TV seems to be
alright. The little 4 GB drive grinds, and since it's on the DVD bus, I
don't dare watch a DVD at that time.
The above was the final configuration. In my initial attempt, both the
primary and sql drives were on the same ATA bus. This was a failure
because the small drive was able to starve the large one for bus bandwidth.
I wrote up a "Troubleshooting:Mythfilldatabase IO Bottleneck" topic on
the MythTV wiki. I'll update it with howto info later.
Scott Doerrie
More information about the mythtv-users
mailing list