[mythtv-users] RingBuf issues - perhaps

[John Finlay]

Mark Garland wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> The frontend locked again last night whilst watching a recorded show. 
> Really frustrating when the girlfriend looks at me and says 'perhaps we
> should have just got a harddisk recorder'!   ;-)
> The backend (same box) was recording 3 other things at the same time,
> however the HDD didn't seem maxed out at all (and previous iostat results
> would suggest this isn't the issue).  The machine was still responsive, just
> the frontend was locked.
>
> Frontend logs say:
> 2009-07-20 21:58:12.991 NVP: Prebuffer wait timed out 10 times.
> 2009-07-20 21:58:14.592 NVP: Prebuffer wait timed out 10 times.
> 2009-07-20 21:58:16.193 NVP: Prebuffer wait timed out 10 times.
> This normally finishes with a ringbuf error (like below).
>
> Is this a common problem?
> I've tried extensive googling, and can find people asking about this but few
> solutions.
> I've raised the RingBuf setting to 96mb (the max) but this just doesn't feel
> right and I'm warned against making it too big because of paging.
> What setting do experienced people use?
>
> Any help would be appreciated - even guidance on how to debug this problem.
> I'm running 0.21.0+fixes19961-0ubuntu8, on a 5050e, 780g, 1TB HDD, 4gb RAM.
>
>   
I had this problem a lot and found that if I use NFS to mount the 
recording directories using the same directory structure as on the MBE 
and allow the FE to read the recorded programs using NFS instead of 
streaming that I get no problems with prebuffering pauses, etc. This may 
not work for you but it might be worth a try.

John