Ability to throttle background processes?

[2twisty]

Sorry if my last post wasn't clear. I only have one Pi. So, MySQL is running on the same Pi as XBMC. It seems to be doing just fine.

The media is connected to the Pi via USB and is exported to the network via Samba on the Pi. MySQL is on the Pi, as is XBMC.

I have XBMC on my MacBook scanning the data in the shares over SMB, then it does any scraping needed, and then updates the database over MySQL.

It is taking a very long time to scan the data. About the same amount of time that it would take if I had the Pi doing it all locally. However, the huge difference is this:

When I scan it all locally, I can't reliably play video while it's doing it. It's just chunky and fails the "wife test" miserably. Right now, she's using the system while the MacBook scans and updates the database. She literally does not know that I am doing that. it's completely transparent to her.

There has been the occasional hiccup in playback. However, that could be due to the fact that I was running the entire system in 1080p (see this thread) so I will see how it shakes out now that I'm back in 720p.

Right now, I only have the video and music databases handled by MySQL. I may try moving ALL the DBs out of SQLite (can I?) to see if that is a viable thing. If so, you may want to consider modding the XBian distro so that it uses MySQL by default.