I have found that running the optimize db script prior to doing mythfilldatabase dramatically improves the performance as well. I was having a similar issue and as soon as I started running the optimize db script I never noticed it again.
<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 11/27/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Chris Rouch</b> <<a href="mailto:chris.rouch@gmail.com">chris.rouch@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On 11/26/06, Mike McKay <<a href="mailto:mike.mckay@dsl.pipex.com">mike.mckay@dsl.pipex.com</a>> wrote:<br>> I am running mythTV backend and frontend on an Athlon XP2000+ (processor<br>> clock 1.7 GHz) with 500 MB of memory and a Hauppage Nova-T, PCI, DVB-T
<br>> tuner.<br>><br>> When watching TV, the frontend, backend, mySQL and X take around 20% of<br>> the processor.<br>><br>> When mythfilldatabase runs, however, it brings everything else to a<br>> halt. The system becomes extremely unresponsive and cannot play TV, or
<br>> anything else for that matter. Mythfilldatabase seems to terminate<br>> normally after running for upwards of an hour and often in excess of two<br>> hours and during this time my system is unusable for anything else.
<br>><br>> On examination, I find that mythfilldatabase is taking 360MB of<br>> *resident* (not virtual) memory out of the 440MB available to users.<br>> Its processor utilisation is about 50% to 100% but I don't think this is
<br>> a cause for concern because it has a "nice" value of +10 set. I'm<br>> currently assuming that the resident memory usage is what's causing the<br>> problem.<br>><br>> I've read the relevant documentation looking for a solution or a way to
<br>> mitigate its behaviour but the only thing I've found so far is the<br>> parameter --days which I've set to 14. This seems to have had little<br>> effect. I use the UK's "Freeview" DVB-T service which provides 40 or so
<br>> channels but from the listings in the mythTV programme guide,<br>> mythfilldatabase is downloading data for a large number of channel that<br>> I cannot receive. Setting things so that these are not loaded might
<br>> reduce the workload but I cannot see how to do this.<br>><br>> These steps, however, are only ever going to reduce the size of the<br>> problem to some extent but are unlikely to remove it. My understanding
<br>> is that mythfilldatabase is downloading a quantity of text information,<br>> munging it to some extent and loading it into the database. I cannot<br>> imagine how it comes to need 360MB of resident memory. Is it really
<br>> supposed to behave like this? It's not as if it's doing anything that's<br>> computationally heavyweight for heavens sake !<br>><br>> I'm considering adding more memory but the system has plenty of memory
<br>> to handle everything else that I ask of it and I'm put off by the<br>> possibility that mythfilldatabase might just use all the additional<br>> memory as well. I'm also reluctant to add memory to deal with such
<br>> perverse behaviour.<br>><br>> Can anyone suggest how to fix or alleviate this problem ?<br><br>It sounds like you need to train your grabber (tv_grab_??) to only<br>look for the channels you want. How to do that depends on the grabber.
<br><br>You could also run mythfilldatabase from cron at a time you don't<br>expect to be doing anything else instead of having it run<br>automatically.<br><br>I'd also expect the duration to be roughly proportional to the number
<br>of days, so try reducing from 14 to e.g. 3 days.<br><br>Regards,<br><br>Chris<br>_______________________________________________<br>mythtv-users mailing list<br><a href="mailto:mythtv-users@mythtv.org">mythtv-users@mythtv.org
</a><br><a href="http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users">http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>John