[mythtv-users] Performance Issues with Network Drive

[Mark Wormgoor]

C.T. Paterson wrote:
> Hey folks,
> 
> Wondering if anyone could supply any insight...
> 
> I have a Mythbuntu 8.10 BE/FE box sitting in my entertainment unit.
> The OS runs off of a USB stick (high temp was killing internal
> drives), and all the media is actually on a pair of SATA drives in a
> DNS-323 NAS.
 >
 > The myth box and the NAS share a GigE connection.  The drives are
 > mounted on the myth box using cifs.

[...]

> Now, I did some math - and had convinced myself that this setup would
> not be an issue.  I reasoned that two recording streams going down to
> the NAS (I have a dual tuner cap card), plus reading a previous
> recording would still leave plenty of room in the pipe.  Three
> simultaneous mpeg2 streams was about the heaviest I could imagine it
> all being.  Nonetheless, I seem to be getting significant performance
> issues, but I can't explain why.
> 
> Soloutions sought, theories welcome, suggestions/ideas gratefully accepted.

CIFS is not a very cpu friendly protocol. These embedded devices often 
have issues with pushing more than 20-40Mbps through Cifs, at which 
point the cpu reaches 100%. Running a torrent on that as well probably 
doesn't make life easier. Have you checked your cpu on the NAS?

I'd suggest running an NFS server with a large block size (32kB) instead.

Kind regards,

Mark Wormgoor