[mythtv-users] Playback problem -- random short pauses

[Rob Smith]

On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 8:57 AM, Steven Adeff <adeffs.mythtv at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mark, Rob, mind going into this some more?
>
> I've got my house system and my parents that I'm managing. My parents
> backend is a a combined be/fe with 2GB of RAM, my backend is
> standalone with 3GB. Is what your saying that I should disable the
> swap files on both systems and that they will run *better*? what
> happens when the systems use all their physical RAM?
>
> thanks!!

I always give my systems a 512 megabyte swap file (not a swap
partition) to buffer against memory spikes/leaks/etc. I rather have a
system slow down to warn me rather then kill a process without
warning.

When you run out of memory (physical and swap) the oom_killer fires
off. It picks a process and kills it, releasing the memory back to the
os.

You can use this script to see which order things will be killed in:
https://github.com/kormoc/Scripts/blob/master/bin/oom_killer_order

and you can use this script to disable killing of specific processes:
https://github.com/kormoc/Scripts/blob/master/bin/oom_disable

I use swap files as there is no performance difference (assuming a
unfragmented file) and allows one to add/remove/grow/shrink as they
want rather then having to repartition.