[mythtv-users] 512 MB - Enough RAM?

[Paul Koster]

Markus Baertschi wrote:
> Drew Zerdecki wrote:
> 
>> Is 512 MB enough for P4 3Ghz system (combined frontend/backend) with a 
>> PVR350 and PVR250?  Thanks for your help.
> 
> I've got only 128M (it is difficult to find PC100 memory for my old box) 
> and
> the only time I would really need more memory is for compiling mythtv. 
> Somehow
> the mythtv c++ stuff is very memory consuming during compilation...

I have two machines running with *no* swap files enabled:
*main frontend/backend machine: 384 MB RAM
   This machine runs flawlessly for several server tasks next to
   mythbackend+mythfrontend, compile jobs, etc.

*2nd frontend: 128 MB RAM
   This machine now and then crashes because it runs out of RAM. It
   hardly runs any service, about 3MB is used for the shared memory
   graphics card. Memory usage after startup is indicated below. The real
   problem comes from some plugins using a large amount of memory for
   certain tasks (from memory: scanning for new music and videos), which
   is actually a pity. I tried to track this down (using valgrind with
   massif) and it seems that it is actually not real application logic or
   buffers that are responsible for peak memory usage but some QT image
   and string manipulation functions.

Mem:    125544k total,   121964k used,     3580k free,        0k buffers
Swap:        0k total,        0k used,        0k free,    46364k cached

   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  Command
   488 root       5 -10 84004  17m 1744 S  0.0 14.1   0:04.61 XFree86
   525 mythtv     9   0 50440  49m  12m S  0.0 40.2   0:05.35 mythfront
   527 mythtv     9   0 50440  49m  12m S  0.0 40.2   0:00.00 mythfront
   528 mythtv     9   0 50440  49m  12m S  0.0 40.2   0:00.00 mythfront
   530 mythtv     9   0 50440  49m  12m S  0.0 40.2   0:00.00 mythfront
   478 root       9   0  3316 3312 3092 S  0.0  2.6   0:00.06 gdm
   472 root       9   0  2896 2892 2744 S  0.0  2.3   0:00.01 gdm
   500 paul       9   0  2088 2084 1912 S  0.0  1.7   0:00.01 sshd
   502 paul       9   0  2064 2064 1236 S  0.0  1.6   0:00.30 bash
   [etc...............................................................]

--
Paul