[mythtv-users] Proposed future power saving networked configuration (0.22 in mind)

[Jon Bishop]

On Feb 18, 2009, at 4:58 AM, Chris Pinkham wrote:

> * On Wed Feb 18, 2009 at 07:37:35PM +1100, Ben Coleman wrote:
>> What are the major benefits are a tuner-less master backend? I am  
>> curious...
>
> A tuner-less capable master backend means that the master can be a VM
> without requiring using USB or network-based tuners on
> the master.
>
> I didn't mention that step in my description.  My HDHR is currently
> connected to a slave that is a VM on my VMware server.  I'd like to
> reverse the situation and make that VM the master and make the current
> master a WOL on-demand slave.  Pair that with the fact that I want to
> get the HDHR close to the fileserver by putting a slave on my  
> fileserver
> just for the HDHR and that means my master would be tuner-less.

Why wouldn't you want your master to be on your fileserver? That  
seemed like the logical setup to me, and I've only had to add 1 sata  
controller since I built the thing (well, and the 3 IDE controllers  
that *used* to be in there, but I replaced ALL those drives with just  
4 sata drives).

I guess my question is simply, why would you want a tunerless master  
if you plan on running multiple slave systems, and your master is  
connected to an HDHR that it isn't powering anyway? Of course, I'm not  
against this, there seems no logical reason not to be able to run a  
backend without a tuner for scheduling, transcoding and comm flagging  
and such, I just don't see a need for a tunerless master backend myself.



>> Has anyone calculated how much power you'd actually be saving  
>> setting up
>> multiple PC's being started/shutdown every day? ...as compared to
>> powering tuners constantly in a master backend only? I'd be  
>> interested
>> in the specs.
>
> <snip>

Though I think your numbers were pretty arbitrary, I definately see  
merit to WOL Slaves. I don't see the power savings that removing a  
couple tuners in your masterbackend being nearly as high as the return  
on having 2 or 3 extra tuners in your slave backends turned off when  
you're not using them (as well as the system).

>
>> FE for noise considerations, but I can't see how you save power by
>> multiple shutdown/startup sequences. I think people just want a use  
>> for
>> lots of small PC's they have stacked in the garage around the  
>> house :)
>
> If you wanted to take advantage of wakeup on demand slaves, then  
> you'd have
> to see if there was a benefit.  In my case, it means I could turn off
> all systems with tuners physically in them (ie, not that HDHR slave  
> on the
> fileserver) for at least 1/2 to 2/3 of the day, and with multirec on  
> the
> HDHR, some would be off for most of the week (in my case 159 hours Off
> compared to only 9 hours On for the whole week).

See, again, why does the vm on the fileserver have to be the slave?

>
> This isn't an issue in my case either.  My MythTV systems are
> nfsroot-based, from my msntv2 boxes to my main frontend to my master
> backend.  Compile and install once and restart everything and I'm  
> done.
> Even if I were using local drives, it's not that hard to run "make
> install" or install an rpm on a couple extra systems.

This sounds really cool, perhaps you can reply to me off list and  
describe more how you've got it set up?

> Sure, it will take me years to save enough power to pay for my
> programming time to add this feature, but if it's $5-10 less that I'm
> paying the power company each month it's worth it now.

But it's worth it... them greedy utilities!  ... Well, actually, I  
believe that as a people, globally, we need to stop depending so much  
on utilities and corporate conglomerates and produce more of our own  
energy. Electricity is so easy to make, and there's so many ways to  
make it... it's just a shame that the inverters to take it from  
batteries and make it a nice pretty 60hz (or 50hz) sine wave are so  
darn expensive. But now I've gone on a tangent.

~Jon