Re: [vdr] mdadm software raid5 arrays?

[Stephan Loescher]

Simon Baxter linu...@nzbaxters.com writes:

 Anyway, I've bought 3x 1.5 TB SATA disks which I'd like to put into a
 software (mdadm) raid 5 array.

[...]

 But does anyone have any production VDR experience with mdadm - good or bad?

If you like good performance and simple recovery, then do not use
RAID5. Use RAID1 instead.

I use RAID5 only because I am too lazy to buy some new and larger disks
for my VDR at the moment :-)

I have had serious performance-problems with parallel recordings and
some Linux-background-jobs (like system-backup).
I solved it by raising the I/O-priority of vdr with ionice:

ionice -c2 -n0 vdr -w 120 -v $VIDEODIR -d -t /dev/tty5 -g /tmp ...

Stephan.

-- 
loesc...@gmx.de
http://www.loescher-online.de/
Try LEO: http://www.leo.org/

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Re: [vdr] mdadm software raid5 arrays?

[Simon Baxter]

But does anyone have any production VDR experience with mdadm - good or 
bad?


I've now tested and implemented RAID5 on my system.  The biggest CPU hit is 
still with the OSD or noad processes - below is a bunch of tests I ran and 
the top processes during the test:


1 recording to raid, watching another live
top - 07:52:18 up 1 day, 20:29,  3 users,  load average: 0.66, 0.54, 0.42
Tasks: 168 total,   2 running, 156 sleeping,  10 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 20.2%us,  6.7%sy,  0.5%ni, 68.3%id,  1.5%wa,  0.5%hi,  2.4%si, 
0.0%st

Mem:   2059352k total,  2038636k used,20716k free,19724k buffers
Swap:  1903692k total,  292k used,  1903400k free,  1412672k cached

 PID USER  PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEMTIME+  COMMAND
2372 vdruser   20   0  542m  37m  18m S 37.1  1.9   1:09.50 xine
2330 vdruser   20   0  486m  26m 4616 S 10.6  1.3   0:21.68 vdr
3020 root  20   0  369m  24m  18m R  9.6  1.2 157:51.36 Xorg
3521 vdruser   20   0  923m 306m  25m S  1.0 15.3  50:59.10 mms
3723 root  15  -5 000 S  0.7  0.0  10:12.08 md0_raid5
2455 root  20   0 14880 1188  872 R  0.3  0.1   0:00.32 top
2593 root  15  -5 000 S  0.3  0.0   1:04.10 kdvb-ca-1:0
3168 vdruser   20   0  139m 5468 3984 S  0.3  0.3   6:03.34 fluxbox


2 recording to raid, watching another live
top - 07:55:09 up 1 day, 20:32,  3 users,  load average: 1.67, 1.00, 0.61
Tasks: 168 total,   1 running, 157 sleeping,  10 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 21.8%us,  7.8%sy,  0.3%ni, 66.6%id,  0.7%wa,  0.7%hi,  2.1%si, 
0.0%st

Mem:   2059352k total,  203k used,20464k free,20732k buffers
Swap:  1903692k total,  292k used,  1903400k free,  1406060k cached

 PID USER  PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEMTIME+  COMMAND
2372 vdruser   20   0  542m  37m  18m S 39.4  1.9   2:17.04 xine
2330 vdruser   20   0  511m  32m 4616 S 13.9  1.6   0:45.66 vdr
3020 root  20   0  369m  24m  18m S  9.9  1.2 158:08.39 Xorg
3723 root  15  -5 000 S  1.3  0.0  10:14.20 md0_raid5
3521 vdruser   20   0  923m 306m  25m S  1.0 15.3  51:00.61 mms
2455 root  20   0 14880 1188  872 R  0.7  0.1   0:01.19 top
 271 root  20   0 000 S  0.3  0.0   0:09.16 pdflush


3 recording to raid, watching another live
top - 07:55:52 up 1 day, 20:32,  3 users,  load average: 1.69, 1.08, 0.65
Tasks: 168 total,   1 running, 157 sleeping,  10 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 22.1%us,  7.2%sy,  0.5%ni, 68.1%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  2.1%si, 
0.0%st

Mem:   2059352k total,  2040896k used,18456k free,20964k buffers
Swap:  1903692k total,  292k used,  1903400k free,  1401876k cached

 PID USER  PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEMTIME+  COMMAND
2372 vdruser   20   0  606m  37m  18m S 34.2  1.9   2:32.21 xine
2330 vdruser   20   0  536m  37m 4616 S 14.3  1.9   0:51.80 vdr
3020 root  20   0  369m  24m  18m S  9.6  1.2 158:12.50 Xorg
3723 root  15  -5 000 S  1.7  0.0  10:14.83 md0_raid5
2455 root  20   0 14880 1188  872 R  0.7  0.1   0:01.41 top
3168 vdruser   20   0  139m 5468 3984 S  0.7  0.3   6:04.13 fluxbox
3521 vdruser   20   0  923m 306m  25m S  0.7 15.3  51:00.98 mms


4 recording to raid, watching another live
top - 07:56:37 up 1 day, 20:33,  3 users,  load average: 1.89, 1.19, 0.71
Tasks: 168 total,   2 running, 156 sleeping,  10 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 23.6%us,  8.0%sy,  0.3%ni, 66.3%id,  0.0%wa,  0.3%hi,  1.5%si, 
0.0%st

Mem:   2059352k total,  2042836k used,16516k free,21264k buffers
Swap:  1903692k total,  292k used,  1903400k free,  1393688k cached

 PID USER  PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEMTIME+  COMMAND
2372 vdruser   20   0  606m  38m  18m S 36.8  1.9   2:48.28 xine
2330 vdruser   20   0  583m  44m 4616 S 15.6  2.2   0:58.77 vdr
3020 root  20   0  369m  24m  18m S  9.0  1.2 158:16.78 Xorg
3723 root  15  -5 000 S  2.3  0.0  10:15.70 md0_raid5
3521 vdruser   20   0  923m 306m  25m S  1.0 15.3  51:01.39 mms
3168 vdruser   20   0  139m 5468 3984 S  0.7  0.3   6:04.30 fluxbox
2455 root  20   0 14880 1188  872 R  0.3  0.1   0:01.64 top
2593 root  15  -5 000 S  0.3  0.0   1:04.21 kdvb-ca-1:0
   1 root  20   0  4080  852  604 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.50 init


4 recording to raid, watching another live, OSD up
top - 07:57:19 up 1 day, 20:34,  3 users,  load average: 1.87, 1.28, 0.75
Tasks: 168 total,   1 running, 157 sleeping,  10 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 32.6%us,  7.6%sy,  0.5%ni, 55.4%id,  1.1%wa,  0.2%hi,  2.6%si, 
0.0%st

Mem:   2059352k total,  2033996k used,25356k free,21516k buffers
Swap:  1903692k total,  292k used,  1903400k free,  1383424k cached

 PID USER  PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEMTIME+  COMMAND
2372 vdruser   20   0  603m  36m  15m S 57.9  1.8   3:05.55 xine
2330 vdruser   20   0  583m  45m 4616 S 12.9  2.2   1:05.39 vdr
3020 root  20   0  366m  20m  14m S  8.9  1.0 158:20.76 Xorg
3723 root  15  -5 000 S  2.3  0.0  10:16.61 md0_raid5

Re: [vdr] vdpau setup steps for vdr client

[Simon Baxter]

I wouldn't bother upgrading, to be honest.

I've had several attempts to upgrade to 1.7 and VDPAU - but consistently 
get audio/video sync problems with live video and issues with indexing 
during rewinding/forwarding during playback.  Have spent more hours than I 
care to say trying to fix this, only to downgrade again.


vdr-1.6.0 and xine-0.8.0 work just fine for me!!


To be fair to my comment above, I've had audio sync problems with live TV on 
all versions above vdr-xine-0.8.0 which is why I've never been able to run a 
newer version in production.  I've had several posts on this and tried 
everything anyone has suggested - but after an hour or my wife banging on 
about the poor quality, always downgrade back to VDR-1.6.0 and 
VDR-XINE-0.8.0


So I don't think my problems are related to VDPAU or VDR-1.7.x.


-Simon 



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Re: [vdr] vdpau setup steps for vdr client

[VDR User]

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 10:44 AM, Simon Baxter linu...@nzbaxters.com wrote:
 To be fair to my comment above, I've had audio sync problems with live TV on
 all versions above vdr-xine-0.8.0 which is why I've never been able to run a
 newer version in production.  I've had several posts on this and tried
 everything anyone has suggested - but after an hour or my wife banging on
 about the poor quality, always downgrade back to VDR-1.6.0 and
 VDR-XINE-0.8.0

 So I don't think my problems are related to VDPAU or VDR-1.7.x.

Maybe your problem is an outdated alsa or something like that?  I use
vdpau with vdr-1.7.10 and xine-0.9.3 with no sync problems.  I also
didn't have to edit ~/.xine/config as the default settings worked
fine.  I agree your issues are elsewhere then vdr or vdpau.

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