[mythtv-users] strange NFS problem

Chris Pinkham cpinkham at bc2va.org
Sat Feb 14 11:28:09 EST 2004


> Thanks Keith & Jason
> 
> It was indeed the commercial flagging.Turned it of and...no problem.
> Guess when using a network its more of a problem then with a local
> harddisk.
> 
> Jack

Shouldn't be an issue unless you've got network problems/issues to begin
with.  I have run my Myth system on NFS from day one and submitted part
of the code that allowed the frontend to play the file directly from NFS
if available rather than streaming from the backend.

I have 2 backends with 4 tuners (1 software, 3 hardware) going and haven't
had any problems related to NFS ever.  My NFS server is a measly
dual Pentium Pro 200 system with only about 10MB/sec transfer rate on
the hard drives but still fast enough to saturate the 100Mbit ethernet.
The fileserver also runs the MySQL database (albeit slow sometimes when
going into the program finder and listing all programs). :)

Using NFS on the frontend instead of just the backend can actually cut
down on network traffic if you mount your video directory on your
frontend servers.  When you use NFS for just the backend, the frontend
streams the video from the backend and the backend is reading from your
NFS server.  So the traffic goes over the net twice.  If your frontend
can mount the NFS directory also then the frontend will just get the video
straight from the NFS server which in turn takes a little strain off your
backend server.  It's not that big of a load to stream the video, but it
can play havoc with your file cache on the server since you're streaming
a file that's bigger than memory so the cache is constantly getting flushed.

Anyway, NFS shouldn't be an issue, lots of people are using it including
several Myth developers.
-- 

Chris



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