Determine loading on system for additional programs?

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jimls
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Determine loading on system for additional programs?

Post by jimls »

Wondering how best to check loading of systems to combine MythTV with Zoneminder on the same PC. Some background...

Have a BE/FE Xubuntu Myth system that I am wanting to upgrade - its running on ubuntu 14.04. It works ok but could be a bit more responsive and want the newer features/improvements. I have Zoneminder with 3 cameras running on a different box - an I5-4570 with 16G of ram with Xubuntu 18.04.
My BE/FE is AMD Athlon II X2 255 2 3 GHz. Both have traditional HDD (not SSD). Dual Silicon Dust tuner for ATA. HDMI out to TV.

My choices seem to be:
Buy a better PC for the BE/FE.
Buy a better PC for BE and keep FE on the existing PC (it has HDMI out and many good used PCs available don't)
Put Myth BE on the Zoneminder box - this is the main reason for looking at loading. I could do this without additional hardware.

If there are other options I should consider I would welcome suggestions.
wesnewell
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Re: Determine loading on system for additional programs?

Post by wesnewell »

An I5-4570 should easily run zoneminder and mythtv backend. upgrade it to 20.04lts and then put mythtv on it. My old be/fe was an amd 2+ with gf8200 built in graphics, a 2.5gh 4 core cpu, and 6 tuners. It easily worked while recording 6 shows at once and watching a recording.
BE/FE-Asrock AB350 Pro Ryzen 3 3200G, 6 atsc tuners. FE's-GF8200's Athlon II, Ryzen 3 2200G. Mythtv user since 2005.
LinuxGeek28
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Re: Determine loading on system for additional programs?

Post by LinuxGeek28 »

Another thought, A Shield TV makes a decent MythTV FE and is cheaper and quieter than a PC. The android client is a 100% functional replacement for a PC and the Shield is adequately powered to handle a modest library.

My dad has over 10K recordings and the Shield TV bogs a little bit. I think he is trying to archive the internet. He maxed-out his 24TB NAS so he added another 60TB worth of shucked WD Easystores, to his FE.

Me, I've been happy with my setup. I have about 1500 recordings and 600 videos making up about 15TB. I switched to the Shield about two years ago and the de-interlacing performance was much better than the HD4000 graphics on my Intel I-3 4330. Plus, I can use the ShieldTV for my other streaming sources and run Kodi on it. I share the MySQL server on my MythTV backend with the Kodi Frontend. My BE is currently running version 29 on 18.04 with XFCE on the backend.

100% satisfied.
jimls
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Re: Determine loading on system for additional programs?

Post by jimls »

Appreciate the feedback but am still looking for an answer to my original question of determining load on my PC. One way is to use top and if the load average is more than the number of cores it's overloaded. I suppose I should try that while recording with all my tuners and playing back too. If I have zoneminder I should have some activity on it as well. I don't have experience with top - only what I have read. So if anyone has some additional words of wisdom on it that would be great.
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