[mythtv-users] Low Power Frontends (in anticipation of nvidia's new API)

[Jan Ceuleers]

David Brodbeck wrote:
> Jan Ceuleers wrote:
>> Do you know whether running mythfilldatabase with a high nice value 
>> alleviates at least that side of the problem? In other words: if the 
>> application that invokes the database has low priority, do the database 
>> threads somehow also get executed with low priority?
> 
> No.  They run with the priority of the mysql process.

That's what I thought: threads don't get created on demand. But I was 
wondering whether the database API somehow includes a priority 
parameter, or indeed whether the database has a priority policy 
framework. I guess not.

> ...you need to figure out where the actual problem is before you try to
> solve it.  Is it that mysql is consuming a lot of CPU?  Is it that
> mythfilldatabase is consuming a lot of CPU?  Or is it because all of the
> database writes saturate the I/O bandwidth?

In my case it's mythfilldatabase that consumes a lot of CPU, so I run it 
at nice -19. The amount of CPU used by mythfilldatabase is about twice 
the amount consumed by mysql.

But the problem I'm trying to solve is not the execution speed of 
mythfilldatabase, but rather that a mythfilldatabase run has minimal 
impact on any foreground processes. My current solution is to simply run 
mythfilldatabase in the middle of the night but I'd like to understand 
what my options are for when I do have to run it during showtime.

Cheers, Jan