[linux-dvb] Warning regarding Ubuntu 8.04, mplayer, and some dvb drivers

[Devin Heitmueller]

Just an FYI in case people run into mplayer problems with Ubuntu 8.04
(I don't know what other drivers this affects, but I would assume just
about all of them)

I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 this week to test the V4L HVR-950 driver and
ran into a problem where mplayer would work the first time but then
subsequent attempts to connect to /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0 would always
be return EBUSY.  After spending the morning littering the driver with
debug code trying to locate what I thought was a bug in the
referencing counting, it occurred to me to just run fuser against the
device file.

root at devin-desktop:~# fuser -v /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0
                    USER        PID ACCESS COMMAND
/dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0:
                    root       6455 f.... mplayer
                    root       6459 f.... dbus-launch
                    root       6460 f.... dbus-daemon

Looks like they integrated mplayer with dbus, but they don't close the
file handles on fork() so dbus inherits the file indefinitely (since
it doesn't close when mplayer closes).

I then put "ubuntu dbus" into my search and it turns up I'm about a
week behind Markus Rechberger because he appears to have already found
the issue:

http://www.mail-archive.com/em28xx@mcentral.de/msg01097.html

And he has already submitted a fix to Ubuntu:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dbus/+bug/230877

Just a heads up in case anybody runs into the same problem with other devices...

-- 
Devin J. Heitmueller
http://www.devinheitmueller.com
AIM: devinheitmueller