Mailing List Archive

At 12:12 PM 8/11/2003 -0500, Obrien, Haskell W. wrote:
>In the Docs, it suggests that 256MB is sufficient.
>However, on my mythtv box I get some hickups every so often, and it seems
>like swapping to me. When I check with top, it's using a good 128mb of swap.
>
>Is this typical? Trying to run down the source of the hickups, they're
>annoying.

If this is a dedicated MythTV system, it is quite unusual. I've seen
nothing like it here, and I can't recall seeing anything like that much
swap use ever reported on the list. So ...

1. Is it a dedicated Myth system? If not, what else runs regularly?

2. What does top (or, better, free) report right after the system
boots/inits? Before mythfrontend even starts running, if possible.

3. What are "hickups" and how often is "every so often"? Metaphor is of
limited value when describing technical problems with systems.

4. What are the basics of the system? Hardware, Linux distro, X driver, and
X wm.

Hiccup - video and audio playback do a sort of crappy pause, then resume.
I didn't think about the fact that KDE is running in the background. I have eliminated some of the extra services such as nfsd and smb.

Mandrake 9.1
P4 1.6ghz
256mb
120gb maxtor drive for storage.
seperate 3gb drive for system.
dss reciever controlled via serial link.
mysql
apache2

Now that I look at it, running just KDE, and doing nothing, 198MB is being used!
sheesh.
I rebooted, minus a couple extra services, and 66MB was in use doing nothing.
Started up mythbackend and kicked off a recording, and I'm at 125MB in use.

I think I just need to put mythfrontend with a lightweight window manager.

Does MYTH need a window manager at all? On my karkomp project, it was just fine running a single X application without the window manager...

Will

-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Olszewski [mailto:ray@comarre.com]
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 12:54 PM
To: mythtv-users@mythtv.org
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Memory Utilization


At 12:12 PM 8/11/2003 -0500, Obrien, Haskell W. wrote:
>In the Docs, it suggests that 256MB is sufficient.
>However, on my mythtv box I get some hickups every so often, and it seems
>like swapping to me. When I check with top, it's using a good 128mb of swap.
>
>Is this typical? Trying to run down the source of the hickups, they're
>annoying.

If this is a dedicated MythTV system, it is quite unusual. I've seen
nothing like it here, and I can't recall seeing anything like that much
swap use ever reported on the list. So ...

1. Is it a dedicated Myth system? If not, what else runs regularly?

2. What does top (or, better, free) report right after the system
boots/inits? Before mythfrontend even starts running, if possible.

3. What are "hickups" and how often is "every so often"? Metaphor is of
limited value when describing technical problems with systems.

4. What are the basics of the system? Hardware, Linux distro, X driver, and
X wm.




_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

From what I read, it does. When you run MythVideo it opens mplayer to
play the video, and whoever posted back then seemed to think (from
experience) that because of that you would need a window manager...

-----Original Message-----
From: Obrien, Haskell W. [mailto:obrienh@more.net]
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 11:30 AM
To: Discussion about mythtv
Subject: RE: [mythtv-users] Memory Utilization

Hiccup - video and audio playback do a sort of crappy pause, then
resume.
I didn't think about the fact that KDE is running in the background. I
have eliminated some of the extra services such as nfsd and smb.

Mandrake 9.1
P4 1.6ghz
256mb
120gb maxtor drive for storage.
seperate 3gb drive for system.
dss reciever controlled via serial link.
mysql
apache2

Now that I look at it, running just KDE, and doing nothing, 198MB is
being used!
sheesh.
I rebooted, minus a couple extra services, and 66MB was in use doing
nothing.
Started up mythbackend and kicked off a recording, and I'm at 125MB in
use.

I think I just need to put mythfrontend with a lightweight window
manager.

Does MYTH need a window manager at all? On my karkomp project, it was
just fine running a single X application without the window manager...

Will

-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Olszewski [mailto:ray@comarre.com]
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 12:54 PM
To: mythtv-users@mythtv.org
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Memory Utilization


At 12:12 PM 8/11/2003 -0500, Obrien, Haskell W. wrote:
>In the Docs, it suggests that 256MB is sufficient.
>However, on my mythtv box I get some hickups every so often, and it
seems
>like swapping to me. When I check with top, it's using a good 128mb of
swap.
>
>Is this typical? Trying to run down the source of the hickups, they're

>annoying.

If this is a dedicated MythTV system, it is quite unusual. I've seen
nothing like it here, and I can't recall seeing anything like that much
swap use ever reported on the list. So ...

1. Is it a dedicated Myth system? If not, what else runs regularly?

2. What does top (or, better, free) report right after the system
boots/inits? Before mythfrontend even starts running, if possible.

3. What are "hickups" and how often is "every so often"? Metaphor is of
limited value when describing technical problems with systems.

4. What are the basics of the system? Hardware, Linux distro, X driver,
and
X wm.




_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users

At 12:40 PM 8/12/2003 -0500, Scott Blomfield wrote:
[...]
>I didn't think about the fact that KDE is running in the background. I
>have eliminated some of the extra services such as nfsd and smb.
>
>Mandrake 9.1
>P4 1.6ghz
>256mb
>120gb maxtor drive for storage.
>seperate 3gb drive for system.
>dss reciever controlled via serial link.
>mysql
>apache2
>
>Now that I look at it, running just KDE, and doing nothing, 198MB is
>being used!

By what standard? "top" reports only total use, and that measure will
invariably creep up to all available RAM (due to kernel buffering and
caching) over time. Better is to run "free" and look at the second line --
usage minus buffer/cache -- to see how much RAM is "really" used by the
system. (I didn't mention this before because it should not affect swap use
-- swap should be used only when there really is too little RAM available
for all the current processes -- and your original problem involved use of
swap.)

>sheesh.
>I rebooted, minus a couple extra services, and 66MB was in use doing
>nothing.
>Started up mythbackend and kicked off a recording, and I'm at 125MB in
>use.

These numbers are quire reasonable.

>I think I just need to put mythfrontend with a lightweight window
>manager.
>
>Does MYTH need a window manager at all? On my karkomp project, it was
>just fine running a single X application without the window manager...

I've never tried running Myth without a WM, but in principle it should
work. I normally run it using blackbox, one of the really lightweight WMs
... handier than no WM if you need, say, an xterm for troubleshooting.
[old stuff deleted]

BTW, you clarified "hiccup" ... though "video and audio playback do a sort
of crappy pause, then resume" is itself a bit lacking in precision ... but
not "every so often". Once a second? Once a minute? Once an hour? And how
long is the "crappy pause" itself?

I just tried it at home during lunch.
.xinitrc:
/usr/bin/local/mythfrontend

And it worked fine.

However. I'm using a keyboard interface, and it seems like the performance of the front end is laggy.

hit watchtv... wait.
hit watch recorded shows .... wait.
select a group of shows.... wait for the first show to highlight.

I'm doing alot of waiting, and keys pressed while waiting don't seem to do much.
like enter enter. Only the first enter does anything.

I've also had to kill the front end a few times when it seems to lock up.

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Blomfield [mailto:ScottB@Cavps.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 12:40 PM
To: Discussion about mythtv
Subject: RE: [mythtv-users] Memory Utilization


From what I read, it does. When you run MythVideo it opens mplayer to
play the video, and whoever posted back then seemed to think (from
experience) that because of that you would need a window manager...

-----Original Message-----
From: Obrien, Haskell W. [mailto:obrienh@more.net]
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 11:30 AM
To: Discussion about mythtv
Subject: RE: [mythtv-users] Memory Utilization

Hiccup - video and audio playback do a sort of crappy pause, then
resume.
I didn't think about the fact that KDE is running in the background. I
have eliminated some of the extra services such as nfsd and smb.

Mandrake 9.1
P4 1.6ghz
256mb
120gb maxtor drive for storage.
seperate 3gb drive for system.
dss reciever controlled via serial link.
mysql
apache2

Now that I look at it, running just KDE, and doing nothing, 198MB is
being used!
sheesh.
I rebooted, minus a couple extra services, and 66MB was in use doing
nothing.
Started up mythbackend and kicked off a recording, and I'm at 125MB in
use.

I think I just need to put mythfrontend with a lightweight window
manager.

Does MYTH need a window manager at all? On my karkomp project, it was
just fine running a single X application without the window manager...

Will

-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Olszewski [mailto:ray@comarre.com]
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 12:54 PM
To: mythtv-users@mythtv.org
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Memory Utilization


At 12:12 PM 8/11/2003 -0500, Obrien, Haskell W. wrote:
>In the Docs, it suggests that 256MB is sufficient.
>However, on my mythtv box I get some hickups every so often, and it
seems
>like swapping to me. When I check with top, it's using a good 128mb of
swap.
>
>Is this typical? Trying to run down the source of the hickups, they're

>annoying.

If this is a dedicated MythTV system, it is quite unusual. I've seen
nothing like it here, and I can't recall seeing anything like that much
swap use ever reported on the list. So ...

1. Is it a dedicated Myth system? If not, what else runs regularly?

2. What does top (or, better, free) report right after the system
boots/inits? Before mythfrontend even starts running, if possible.

3. What are "hickups" and how often is "every so often"? Metaphor is of
limited value when describing technical problems with systems.

4. What are the basics of the system? Hardware, Linux distro, X driver,
and
X wm.




_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users


_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users