Slow channel change on network ecoder

[Ghampton]

Hi all, I recently made the switch from Windows to Linux and have almost everything working. I'm very happy with it!

The primary server is running dual tuners and controlling two STB via firewire (that's all working great).

The problem is my 2nd server that is used as a network encoder due to lack of PCI slots in the other. The network encoding itself is working fair, the issue is that the channel change takes about 30 seconds on the two network encoded tuners (straight pvr-150s connected to coaxial cable). At first I get a No Signal message and then eventually the video starts playing on the clients. The video is also somewhat choppy at times when live (I can work that out). If I use a client and connect directly to the 2nd sage server then everything is fine so I think the issue is in the network encoding setup.

Any suggestions? Sorry in advance if I missed an obvious forum solution. Oh, both boxes are running the latest Ubuntu 32-bit.

Greg

[Ghampton]

Here is a clue for you Linux experts. I think the issue is related to the NFS mounts that had to be created on the network encoding server. The recording directories are NFS mounted on the network encoding server.

Here is the clue:
For some reason I noticed that if I do an ls /media/TV (that is the NFS mounted directory) after clicking play on the remote that it causes the video to start immediately. Also, if the video has paused running (aka choppy) the ls command unfreezes it. It's almost like there is a buffer or something that gets "kicked" when the ls command is executed. I can duplicate the behavior repeatedly too. I'm not an NFS or Linux expert so I'm hoping you all have an idea.

Any thoughts on that?
Greg

[Ghampton]

This is resolved although I never really understood what the issue was. I switched from using NFS to CIFS (samba) and the two network encoding tuners now work correctly with no pauses or jerkiness.
It's strange that setting up network encoding on Linux is so different than on Windows, but these forums are certainly a great resource.

So now both back-end servers are running Ubuntu and I'm happy to have two less Microsoft boxes. Now if I could only get the clients off MS!