[mythtv-users] A few 0.19 and RAM questions

Robert Tsai rtsai1111 at comcast.net
Sun Feb 5 17:09:46 UTC 2006


On Sat, Feb 04, 2006 at 08:23:08PM -0800, Yeechang Lee wrote:
> Like all other 0.18.1 users on the list I am eagerly looking forward
> to 0.19 (specifically, the ATrpms version). A few questions in
> advance:

I've been running CVS/SVN for quite some time (Feb 2005, don't know
what release that translates to):

> a) Is the (takes a deep breath) "Certain recordings on playback
>    consistently crash mythfrontend immediately and/or prevent the
>    OSD from appearing and/or crash the frontend when the OSD appears
>    for any reason, although the recordings play back fine in mplayer
>    and in the preview window" issue definitely fixed in 0.19?  I
>    seem to recall reading as much, but am not sure.

I haven't experienced this issue ever, so I probably can't provide a
meaningful answer.

> b) Based on some hints I've read here and elsewhere I get the
>    impression that many or all of the root architectural causes that
>    result in IOBOUND error messages when recording HDTV (especially
>    more than one at a time, or when there is other disk activity
>    going on, including deletes and commflagging) are solved in 0.19.
>    True?

I've never experienced IOBOUND errors, either. This is despite:

	- Two HD3000 cards often simultaneously recording OTA HDTV to
	  a pair of SATA drives (JFS on LVM),

	- Sometimes concurrently watching a recording (combined FE/BE
	  system), and

	- Sometimes, for good measure, also building a new kernel or
	  mythtv SVN update.

I don't religiously watch my logfiles, but I haven't experienced any
problems.

> c) What does MythTV use additional RAM for, if anything? I have 512MB
>    on my frontend/backend that is solely dedicated to MythTV.
>    Despite my best efforts at cutting back on extraneous
>    applications and daemons, including switching from full-blown KDE
>    to ratpoison and from xterm to rxvt, the system consistently uses
>    150-300MB of swap according to 'free -m'. If I were to upgrade to
>    2GB of RAM, would mythbackend automatically use the extra RAM to,
>    say, buffer recordings so as to minimize the IOBOUND errors I
>    mention in b)? Or would upgrading to 1GB, thus theoretically
>    eliminating the need for any swap, be sufficient?

I can't answer your question. I have 1GB RAM and have never seen my
swap space utilization go over 1MB at most, so maybe 1GB RAM would be
sufficient ...

--Rob
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