[mythtv-users] Running mythbackend on a low-power device

[Tyler T]

>> know if 128 MB of RAM is enough to run the mythbackend. Thoughts?
>>
> Eek.  That's not much RAM at all.  I quick look at top on my 512 MB backend
> shows this:
>
> PID      USER     PR  NI  VIRT  RES SHR  S  %CPU %MEM   TIME+ COMMAND
> 10800 mysql     20   0  158m  40m 3504 S  0.0  8.1  52:17.28 mysqld
>  2721 mythtv    20   0  249m  10m 4296 S  0.0  2.1 100:35.37 mythbackend

Here's my Kirkwood ARM device (512MB RAM):
PID  USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
1289 mythtv 20   0  432m  60m 4116 S  0.3 12.1 724:06.98 mythbackend
1239 mysql     20   0  378m  31m 2844 S  0.3  6.2 121:53.39 mysqld

Note that you don't necessarily need "249m" or "432m" (VIRT) RAM to
run the Myth process. Much of that is swapped to disk or in shared
libraries. As a rough guideline, you want RES (40m, 60m) to totally
fit within RAM.

So 128MB will be tight, to be sure, but for a couple dozen OTA
channels or basic cable will probably work with a bit of swapping. If
you've got lots of channels or lots of recording rules, your
rescheduling runs might start to get unacceptably long though.

To confirm, I have indeed started up MySQL and Myth BE 0.24 on a
Seagate Dockstar with 128m, and they ran... but then again I didn't
load it down with a complicated config.