[linux-dvb] Re: Quality of dvb-kernel in upcoming 2.6

[Michael Hunold <hunold@convergence.de>]

Hello Emard,

> MMmm seems interesting, now I got one idea around this, namely
> when using budget-patch I first load dvb-ttpci because it
> loads the firmware and then remove dvb-ttpci and load budget-patch 
> (both of them react on the same PCI:id of course, 
> bacause they are two different drivers for the same card)
>
> Even though I'm not using most of its sophisticated functions, 
> firmware is good to have loaded because of diseqc.
>
> Now, can I load dvb-s firmware from the budget-patch directly, 
> that would be much better than loading and unloading dvb-ttpci ?
In theory, yes. I'm planning to split up the av7110 driver into several 
parts. I can split off the firmware loading stuff to one separate file, 
that can be compiled and linked to the budget-patch driver, too.

I think that would be the best solution, but I don't know when this will 
happen.

> Hmmm I should also be getting 100% good reception on weather with no rain.
> When it rains heavyly, some weaker transponders (radio harmony.fm on astra
> tend to get packets missing, but stronger transponders like ZDF are still
> 100% even on bad weather)
Same for me.

> > The crc-checking code is currently broken in 2.6, but I don't know if 
> > network stuff uses crc-checking by default.
> >
> > You might want to try to "makelinks" the dvb-kernel driver, because 
> > there have been fixes that I haven't sent to Linus yet.
>
> I see! (before I had just patched the kernel)
Yes, then you should use the "makelinks" script to replace the kernel 
driver files with the CVS files. As I said earlier, the firmware patches 
are non-functional at the moment, but I'm working on it today. The 
author of the "firmware_class" subsystem has sent me a patch this 
morning that I've to test.

> > Probably something within in the network device subsystem, which has 
> > changed in 2.6. recently. Probably this is a bug in the driver which did 
> > not look bad in 2.4...
>
> :) some lucky mix of circumstances in 2.4 gave that nice behaviour.
> dvb0_0 went away as if it were ppp0 disappearing after modem hangup :)
Yes, probably.

> This is the insofar the investigation (on 2.4)
[...]
> I got to the point that I applied 2 cards in parallel 
> (antenna goes to LNB IN of budget-patch and from its LNB OUT signal 
> goes into LNB IN of normal budget card) and, imagine, 
> BOTH CARDS HAD THE SAME NETWORK PACKETS MISSING!!
Ok, so apparently there's still something wrong with the packet capture 
stuff. 8-/

> After measurement with the 2 cards it is clear to me that the 
> loss doesn't come statistically like from bad reception/too weak 
> signal for some tuner/decoder or by random dropping by the kernel going
> running low on input buffers. if it does, then 2 cards would
> easily cover the missing 10-20% of missing packets.
Yes, I agree. Sounds like a driver bug. Perhaps some of the budget 
driver gurus can comment on this.

> (end of network saga episode, to be continued)
> Emard
CU
Michael.



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