[mythtv-users] Are there any throttling features in Mythtv?

Mike Perkins mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk
Tue Feb 3 16:21:20 UTC 2009


Kevin Kuphal wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 10:01 AM, Mike Perkins
> <mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk>wrote:
> 
>> Sunday evening, we sat down to watch a film I'd recorded just before
>> Christmas, 2 hours long. This was about 7:45 pm. An hour and a half later,
>> the whole system hung. There was not the slightest sign that anything was
>> wrong up to the point it froze.
>>
>> After some investigation of the front end[1] I discovered that the back end
>> had hung. This was because at 8:55 pm the back end had begun three
>> simultaneous recordings on three DVB-T tuners. Apparently my back end
>> couldn't cope with reading and writing four streams simultaneously[2].
>>
>> Now, before you all scream "throw more hardware at it!" I would like to
>> point out that whatever system you've got, a point will come when you are
>> likely to stress it. So it occurred to me to wonder if there was any kind of
>> throttling or warning available in mythtv, apart from "max # of jobs to run
>> on this backend".
>>
>> For example, if I were to play a long film that happened to overlap a
>> period of heavy recording, would it be possible for the system to say
>> something like "this probably isn't a good idea, go and watch something
>> shorter"? Or for it to show me what's likely to happen within the playing
>> time of the selected program?
>>
>> I wouldn't want to go as far as rescheduling, but some kind of information
>> screen might be useful. At the moment, to find out what's scheduled involves
>> going into "schedule programs" then "upcoming recordings" to see a list,
>> then backing out and going to "watch recordings" to find something to watch.
>> Anyone any suggestions?
>>
>> [1] see separate post. The front end was ok in this instance.
>> [2] recording three simultaneous streams is known to work ok. Recording 2
>> streams and watching one is known to work ok.
> 
> 
> Quick answer, no.  It's up to you not to configure your system to exceed
> it's capacities.
> 
But sometimes, particularly after a reschedule, things can get recorded when you 
least expect it, and if you've had the front end going for a while, it's easy to 
miss a change that might affect the load. Perhaps what I need is something like 
Mythweb's "Next 10 recordings" from the status page, displayed at a suitable point.

-- 

Mike Perkins



More information about the mythtv-users mailing list