[mythtv-users] Large-scale myth farm

[Dewey Smolka]

> >>
> >> Multiple backends - I can't see an overview of how this works -
> >> is there one? From what I can understand, you configure
> >> additional backends with additional capture cards, and the
> >> master backend farms out the capture work to the others -
> >> correct? Where does transcoding take place? Are these jobs
> >> shared out intelligently, or does transcoding always occur on
> >> the backend which captured the programme?
>
>
> Not sure that you can have multiple backends. Perhaps I've misunderstood this
> but you can have many frontends onto one backend. You could reconfigure the
> frontend to use different backends but I wasn;t aware that you could actually
> make MythTv into a clustered farm. Kinda neet but not that useful to many people.
>

You are misunderstanding this. There is no restriction on the number
of backends in a Myth cluster. Simply put, any machine that captures
content is a backend, any machine that displays content is a frontend.
The only requirement is that one backend needs to be configured as the
master BE in order to control the MySQL part.

I haven't set up a multiple BE system, so take what I say with a grain
of salt. However, as I understand it, each BE can record and store
content locally (since the playback is handled through an internal
protocol), or all backends can record to the same volume, provided it
is accessible through the network. I believe transcoding works much
the same way -- that each machine can be configured to transcode its
own recordings, or the transcoding jobs can all be run by a dedicated
machine or set of machines.

It's generally pretty difficult to find (let alone write and maintain)
definitive documentation for a project that is in such rapid
development as Myth TV, but this list is an invaluble resource.
There's been quite a bit of discussion of late about adding slave BEs,
so the list archives are an obvious place to start:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/

Good luck, it sounds like a great project.