[mythtv-users] Memory usage -- Is 256 MB enough?

[Johnson, Thor]

Hrm... I'm trying to run frontend+backend on a AthlonXP2500+ with 256 MB
of ram (Gentoo 2.6.10), using a BT878 tuner (I want to add the pcHDTV,
but since my TV is low-def it's not a priority.  Though I've noticed
that NFL coverage has changed so you can't really see what's going on
without Widescreen, so I wanted to do letterboxing with the pcHDtv --
but that is a different discussion ;).

Things on the box:
   myth (frontend, backend)
   mythweb (apache2, php5)
   ssh, metalog, vixiecron
   ntp-client, smartmond, icewm
   lvm2

After booting, and it starts recording, it seems to hover around 2.5MB
of swap used (fine by me).  After a few shows go by and the commercial
flagging process fires off, sometimes (it hasn't always done this), the
swap used will go 150MB over the course of 30 minutes (most of the
memory is "used" by mythtranscode), and the system will grind to a
horrible halt (top reports 80-90% in I/O wait, and mythbackend starts
complaining about running out of free audio buffers). killall
mythtranscode will make the system usable again.

Questions:
  1.  What happened?  This has been working for a few months without
problems.  The last thing I did was expand the XFS partition that I
store my videos on.

  2.  How much ram do others have in their box?  I thought 256 would be
enough (I had problems with 128 in swap, but it would work most of the
time).

  3.  Any ideas on how to troubleshoot this?

Thanks,
Thor Johnson