[mythtv-users] mythbackend still eats memory: the current status
Udo van den Heuvel
udovdh at xs4all.nl
Sun Jan 4 11:26:50 UTC 2009
Hello,
As you know MythTV, at least the backend, leaks resources.
Currently I am using svn 19412 of the 'fixes' branch.
Build Date: Sun 21 Dec 2008 03:57:00 PM CET
Install Date: Wed 24 Dec 2008 04:52:24 PM CET
Besides a few 'normal' schedules I run 3 `power searches` with queries like:
channel.callsign = "NL1" AND program.starttime < DATE_ADD( NOW( ) ,
INTERVAL 10 HOUR )
This is to record channels NL1, NL2, and NL3 24/7 off one multiplex and
to limit the amount of CPU the scheduler wastes on scheduling.
There is 1 minute preroll and postroll on every program, so I have 7
virtual tuners configured to avoid running out of tuners.
Of course I have 1 real tuner: a DVB-T card in my VIA EN-12000, which
has 1G of RAM and 1TB of disk.
The box just records, does not much else besides running Fedora 10.
I restarted the backend on 27th of december and since then gathered
these stats:
%CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME
9.5 11.5 444464 112264 ? Ssl Dec27 93:15
9.6 12.3 450640 119536 ? Ssl Dec27 233:03
10.0 13.1 459412 127400 ? Ssl Dec27 385:30
10.1 14.2 470656 137924 ? Ssl Dec27 535:29
10.0 15.1 479536 146984 ? Ssl 2008 680:09
9.9 15.7 486244 153016 ? Ssl 2008 815:54
10.0 16.8 497588 163676 ? Ssl 2008 963:25
10.0 17.6 505328 171696 ? Ssl 2008 1108:20
As you can see the virtual size and resident size grow.
And keep growing all the time. (yes, they are)
It's *not just* caused by using EIT or because of the multirec feature.
(multirec is in 'fixes' and thus considered stable)
The issues was also there before I had EIT working.
Running valgrind to find the causes of the presumed leaks is not an
option due to the lack of CPU in this machine.
From what I read on this list other people also see similar behaviour
of the backend (continuously growing memory size).
It's dealt with by restarting the backend every now and then or maybe by
upgrading to another svn which forces a restart anyhow.
What can we do to fix most of the common leaks and make MythTV run more
stable this way?
Think of some test-suites to find the most obvious leaks?
Please post your ideas, maybe we can work something out in 2009!
Kind regards,
Udo
PS: w.r.t. CPU: where is that plug-in compatibility that VIA advertised
for the nano CPU? I want an EN-like board with PCI (not PCIe!) and a
faster nano CPU.
Same for LT/EK: no PCIe but PCI *with* nano CPU, please.
PS2: Is there a way to run a virtual environment with virtual tuners and
virtual signals for MythTV's virtual tuners? (my other box can do
VirtualBox etc)
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