[mythtv-users] Best configuration for current hardware

Brad DerManouelian myth at dermanouelian.com
Mon Mar 3 04:59:26 UTC 2008


On Mar 2, 2008, at 8:40 PM, Richard Shaw wrote:

> I'm looking at upgrading a few components in my current myth box as it
> works but is marginal for HD playback.
>
> Current specs:
> Sempron 64 3000+ (Socket 754)
> 512MB PC3200 ram
> 250GB ATA/100 hard drive.
> Nvidia 6200 AGP graphics.
>
> I can't really afford to build a completely new box so I'm wondering
> how best to configure what I have and an additional hard disk and
> maybe an upgrade to 1GB ram.
>
> On boot and non TV usage it doesn't use hardly any swap space but
> after watching/recording a few shows it uses as much as 500MB. When
> there is a lot of disk activity things get really slow and sometimes
> don't recover but will just "sit" there until I exit TV mode and go
> back in.
>
> I'm planning on adding a 500GB SATA drive and will likely format it
> XFS but I have some configuration options I'd like some input on.
>
> 1. Should I mess with LVM for the second drive or just make it one big
> partition?

Just make it a single partition.

> 2. Should I move the ring-buffer to the second drive? This would
> offload it from the primary drive which is formatted EXT3, however, if
> I separated it from the recorded videos then it would be able to copy
> from one drive to another which should be much faster than copying to
> and from the same disk.

You should keep your system/MySQL stuff on a separate physical drive  
from your recordings. There's a lot of MySQL activity while recording  
(inserting seektable information) so your drives will be happier if it  
was recording video to one and inserting MySQL data to the other.

> 3. Would I see a significant improvement with upgrading my ram to 1GB?

Yes. You said you're swapping up to 500MB right now. Adding another  
512MB will definitely reduce strain on your disk and give you much  
happier performance.

> Just playing HD content only uses 30-50% CPU even without XvMC but
> even using the OSD causes small pauses in playback.

You didn't mention you were going to upgrade your processor. Of course  
a faster processor will help your pause when displaying OSD but if  
pausing for a moment when displaying your OSD doesn't bother you too  
much, I say save your money until you can upgrade your motherboard and  
get a much faster (dual core or the like) processor.

> I was initially planning on just taking the easy way out and adding
> the new drive and copy /var over to it since I'm using the
> /var/lib/myth* directories but I thought it might be better to at
> least create a new /media directory and just move the media related
> files instead.
>
> Thanks,
> Richard



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