[mythtv-users] Backend "Idle" processor usage

[David George]

On 3/28/2005 6:06 AM, Dave Ansell wrote:

>     My backend system (Athlon XP 1700+) registers a processor load of 
> about 0.6-0.7 when backend is idle (ie no streaming, no recording 
> going on).

Seems high.  Granted I am running my backend on a P4 2.4, but my load 
ave is 0.00 when idle (just now checked it to make sure).

>   The  top command indicates that virtually all this load is from the 
> myth backend processes.
>
>  I have never really understood what is a "good" load average, but I 
> thought it was generally best to stay below 1.  So this seems a high 
> idle load.

Best to stay below 1.0 per CPU.  For example, on a dual processor system 
this should be below 2.  Not that this is hyper-critical.  The load 
average is the number of processes that are in the run queue.  Basically 
the number of processes that could be running right now if they had 
CPU.  The higher the number the more things want to run at the same 
time, blah-blah-blah.  Anyway hopefully you get the idea.  There is more 
to it than this, but hopefully this will give you the idea.

>   So the question is, what on earth is the backend amusing itself with 
> all the time?

Good question.  I just started something to record to see what would 
happen and my load avg only went up to 0.07.  This is on Fedora Core 2 
with 2.6.11.2 kernel, (2) PVR-250 (ivtv 0.2.0 rc3h), P4 2.4GHz as 
mentioned above, 512Meg RAM, 6 ATA hard drives (4 in LVM with XFS).

-- 
David

HDTV capable frontend I am working on (now with a picture)
  http://mythhd.info