I've up till now been running a rather antiquated hand-built vdr 1.2.6 on a similarly moldy RH9 installation, accessed mainly via vdradmin.
I now moved the card (Hauppauge full-feature DVB-C w/CI+CAM) to a new Fedora Core 4 installation with ready-built vdr-1.3.37-0.lvn.1.4 and vdradmin-0.97-1.lvn.6.am3.4.2.4 from Livna.org, but all did not go according to plan.
The first hurdle was downloading and installing the card firmware, why, oh why, can't the package creators actually document what they have and have not included with it? Both packages just include the standard (nigh-useless) original documentation. Of course the fact that vdr says the firmware should go to /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware instead of the correct location /lib/firmware did not help much, could this be fixed?
Once that was done, trying out the old 1.2.6 channels.conf (which I had generated using my converter, see [1] below), I realized vdr only found the national broadcaster (YLE) bouquet channels, everything else (both free and encrypted) was missing. I decided to just try scanning the cable, but this didn't work too well:
# /usr/bin/scandvb -o vdr /usr/share/dvb-apps/dvb-c/fi-htv scanning /usr/share/dvb-apps/dvb-c/fi-htv using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0' initial transponder 283000000 5900000 0 4
tune to: 283:M128:C:5900:
WARNING: filter timeout pid 0x0011 WARNING: filter timeout pid 0x0000 WARNING: filter timeout pid 0x0010 dumping lists (0 services) Done.
(syslog entries)
Dec 26 00:15:12 piglet kernel: av7110_wait_msgstate: timeout waiting for MSGSTATE 0040 Dec 26 00:15:13 piglet kernel: dvb-ttpci: __av7110_send_fw_cmd(): timeout waiting for COMMAND idle Dec 26 00:15:13 piglet kernel: dvb-ttpci: av7110_send_fw_cmd(): av7110_send_fw_cmd error -110 Dec 26 00:15:13 piglet kernel: dvb-ttpci: av7110_fw_cmd error -110
Consulting the linuxtv Wiki [2] I found out that the format of the file had changed, and noted that the new vdr had changed my original channels file to include the bouquet information for YLE. I did a few changes to my converter to do likewise [3], but things did not really improve. I still have just the YLE channels and nothing else.
I'm pretty much out of ideas. What can cause this, and what can I do? Does anyone have a ready working channels.conf for DVB-C in Helsinki?
1. http://eetis.co.jyu.fi/dvb/ 2. http://www.linuxtv.org/vdrwiki/index.php/Syntax_of_channels.conf 3. Though, where am I supposed to find a proper provider name, which as far as I know technically is NOT the same thing as a bouquet name, as several providers can share one bouquet?
Otto J. Makela wrote:
# /usr/bin/scandvb -o vdr /usr/share/dvb-apps/dvb-c/fi-htv scanning /usr/share/dvb-apps/dvb-c/fi-htv using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0' initial transponder 283000000 5900000 0 4
tune to: 283:M128:C:5900:
WARNING: filter timeout pid 0x0011 WARNING: filter timeout pid 0x0000 WARNING: filter timeout pid 0x0010 dumping lists (0 services) Done.
Okay, something is wrong here.
(syslog entries)
Dec 26 00:15:12 piglet kernel: av7110_wait_msgstate: timeout waiting for MSGSTATE 0040 Dec 26 00:15:13 piglet kernel: dvb-ttpci: __av7110_send_fw_cmd(): timeout waiting for COMMAND idle Dec 26 00:15:13 piglet kernel: dvb-ttpci: av7110_send_fw_cmd(): av7110_send_fw_cmd error -110 Dec 26 00:15:13 piglet kernel: dvb-ttpci: av7110_fw_cmd error -110
The card's firmware seems to be misbehaving. Which firmware did you use?
Consulting the linuxtv Wiki [2] I found out that the format of the file had changed, and noted that the new vdr had changed my original channels file to include the bouquet information for YLE. I did a few changes to my converter to do likewise [3], but things did not really improve. I still have just the YLE channels and nothing else.
The old config should work just fine, VDR can convert it to the new format on-the-fly.
I'm pretty much out of ideas. What can cause this, and what can I do? Does anyone have a ready working channels.conf for DVB-C in Helsinki?
HTV cable network provides this service to VDR users: http://dvb.swelcom.fi/vdrconf.php
- http://eetis.co.jyu.fi/dvb/
- http://www.linuxtv.org/vdrwiki/index.php/Syntax_of_channels.conf
- Though, where am I supposed to find a proper provider name, which as far as I know technically is NOT the same thing as a bouquet name, as several providers can share one bouquet?
There is no need to find a bouquet (= provider) name, that's VDR's job.
Anssi Hannula wrote:
Otto J. Makela wrote:
I still have just the YLE channels and nothing else.
And, forgot to add, if you have YLE channels, VDR should find the other channels too, when you left it for idle about 30secs and have the automatic channel add enabled in the configuration.
On Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 03:35:12 +0200, Anssi Hannula wrote:
Otto J. Makela wrote:
# /usr/bin/scandvb -o vdr /usr/share/dvb-apps/dvb-c/fi-htv scanning /usr/share/dvb-apps/dvb-c/fi-htv using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0' initial transponder 283000000 5900000 0 4
tune to: 283:M128:C:5900:
WARNING: filter timeout pid 0x0011 WARNING: filter timeout pid 0x0000 WARNING: filter timeout pid 0x0010 dumping lists (0 services) Done.
Okay, something is wrong here.
(syslog entries)
Dec 26 00:15:12 piglet kernel: av7110_wait_msgstate: timeout waiting for MSGSTATE 0040 Dec 26 00:15:13 piglet kernel: dvb-ttpci: __av7110_send_fw_cmd(): timeout waiting for COMMAND idle Dec 26 00:15:13 piglet kernel: dvb-ttpci: av7110_send_fw_cmd(): av7110_send_fw_cmd error -110 Dec 26 00:15:13 piglet kernel: dvb-ttpci: av7110_fw_cmd error -110
The card's firmware seems to be misbehaving. Which firmware did you use?
http://www.linuxtv.org/download/dvb/firmware/dvb-ttpci-01.fw-2622 saved as /lib/firmware/dvb-ttpci-01.fw -- are there known issues?
On Mon, 2005-12-26 at 02:14 +0200, Otto J. Makela wrote:
The first hurdle was downloading and installing the card firmware, why, oh why, can't the package creators actually document what they have and have not included with it?
I'm not sure what you're asking, but the package maintainer doesn't have a setup that would need any firmware nor has access to one and nobody has reported any related issues before this. Could you provide an example of what kind of package specific documentation would you have found useful?
Both packages just include the standard (nigh-useless) original documentation. Of course the fact that vdr says the firmware should go to /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware instead of the correct location /lib/firmware did not help much, could this be fixed?
I don't see anything in VDR's documentation or sources that would refer to any firmware paths, so the thing saying the above is probably the DVB driver you're using. I just sent a patch to the DVB mailing list that might improve the related messages and docs a bit.
Does anyone have a ready working channels.conf for DVB-C in Helsinki?
Will send you mine in PM.
On Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 13:52:39 +0200, Ville Skyttä wrote:
On Mon, 2005-12-26 at 02:14 +0200, Otto J. Makela wrote:
The first hurdle was downloading and installing the card firmware, why, oh why, can't the package creators actually document what they have and have not included with it?
I'm not sure what you're asking, but the package maintainer doesn't have a setup that would need any firmware nor has access to one and nobody has reported any related issues before this. Could you provide an example of what kind of package specific documentation would you have found useful?
I'd like to see very simple things in this installation documentation like what the mechanism for starting the software is, what plugins are included, and what kind of tweaks may be required before using it.
For example, in vdr-1.3.37-0.lvn.1.4 the start mechanism is a standard /etc/init.d script, but it wasn't that long ago when the recommendation was to run vdr directly from inittab.
Another example where documentation would make things easier, it took me a while (call me stupid) to figure out yum-2.4.1-1.fc4: the way /etc/cron.daily/yum.cron looks at /var/lock/subsys/yum, which is controlled by /etc/init.d/yum {start|stop} -- elegant, but a bit obscure unless you know what's happening.
The vdr package drops files to /etc/sysconfig, /etc/vdr, /srv, /usr/bin, /usr/lib, /usr/sbin, /usr/share, /var/cache, /var/lib, plus of course /etc/rc.d and /var/run. It'd be nice to have it immediately pointed out to you that /etc/vdr is where the configs are, /srv is where the recordings go and /var/cache is where the epg is stored, as the "documentation" in /usr/share/doc of course says nothing about these things. I'm not sure how standard these locations are at this point of vdr development?
I can well understand not including info on the firmware if one doesn't have the hardware that requires it. I find it a bit frustrating that one has to search for these other things oneself when using ready-made packages, very handy though they are.
If I wanted to explore and have a grand adventure at it, I would build from bleeding-edge CVS. I'd prefer not to, I just don't have the time for it, that's exactly why I'm using the ready-built packages (thanks to whoever maintains them!)
Both packages just include the standard (nigh-useless) original documentation. Of course the fact that vdr says the firmware should go to /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware instead of the correct location /lib/firmware did not help much, could this be fixed?
I don't see anything in VDR's documentation or sources that would refer to any firmware paths, so the thing saying the above is probably the DVB driver you're using. I just sent a patch to the DVB mailing list that might improve the related messages and docs a bit.
You are correct, it's the dvb driver:
Dec 25 19:55:59 piglet kernel: dvb-ttpci: could not load firmware, file not found: dvb-ttpci-01.fw Dec 25 19:55:59 piglet kernel: dvb-ttpci: usually this should be in /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware Dec 25 19:55:59 piglet kernel: dvb-ttpci: and can be downloaded here http://www.linuxtv.org/download/dvb/firmware/
Does anyone have a ready working channels.conf for DVB-C in Helsinki?
Will send you mine in PM.
Thanks, used this as a basis to correct the problem in my generator -- turns out having anything but zero in the NID field causes the rather strange problems I was experiencing. As before, my channels.conf generator for HTV is available at http://eetis.co.jyu.fi/dvb/
If you've read so far, sorry about all the kvetching.
Otto J. Makela wrote:
The vdr package drops files to /etc/sysconfig, /etc/vdr, /srv, /usr/bin, /usr/lib, /usr/sbin, /usr/share, /var/cache, /var/lib, plus of course /etc/rc.d and /var/run. It'd be nice to have it immediately pointed out to you that /etc/vdr is where the configs are, /srv is where the recordings go and /var/cache is where the epg is stored, as the "documentation" in /usr/share/doc of course says nothing about these things. I'm not sure how standard these locations are at this point of vdr development?
They are not. Each distribution has its own plan for file locations and startup concepts.
VDR defaults to put config, epg and recordings into /video. Documentation is in the source directory, and the default install location is /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/bin/PLUGINS/lib. Man pages go to /usr/local/man. Since there is no default startup concept, there are no init scripts.
If you want these details documented, complain to the package maintainer. However, from experience, I already don't expect such things to be documented. I often examine package file lists and reading startup scripts to get the info I want.
documentation. Of course the fact that vdr says the firmware should go to /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware instead of the correct location /lib/firmware did not help much, could this be fixed?
AFAIK this location is only valid for very recent versions of the hotplug manager dated 2004-09-20 or newer. Older versions prefer /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware. The message however is from DVB kernel driver and it may be a good idea to mention both locations in the future.
Cheers,
Udo
On Wed, 2005-12-28 at 01:58 +0200, Otto J. Makela wrote:
I'd like to see very simple things in this installation documentation like what the mechanism for starting the software is, what plugins are included, and what kind of tweaks may be required before using it.
Well, like Udo said, packaged software tends to follow the distribution's conventions for file locations, service startup etc, and IMO it would be redundant to document that in every package unless it considerably deviates from those. In the case of the vdr packages at livna.org, the installation locations try to follow FHS and Fedora's conventions which I believe will cause least surprises for people accustomed to the distro's way of doing things.
For example, in vdr-1.3.37-0.lvn.1.4 the start mechanism is a standard /etc/init.d script, but it wasn't that long ago when the recommendation was to run vdr directly from inittab.
I'm not aware of such a recommendation, and quite frankly, I would find it odd if a package tried to plug itself into inittab (which would require modifying the inittab file, possibly risking smoothness of automated distro upgrades).
Another example where documentation would make things easier, it took me a while (call me stupid) to figure out yum-2.4.1-1.fc4: the way /etc/cron.daily/yum.cron looks at /var/lock/subsys/yum, which is controlled by /etc/init.d/yum {start|stop} -- elegant, but a bit obscure unless you know what's happening.
I agree (even though I wouldn't describe that as elegant), but that's somewhat off topic here.
The vdr package drops files to /etc/sysconfig, /etc/vdr, /srv, /usr/bin, /usr/lib, /usr/sbin, /usr/share, /var/cache, /var/lib, plus of course /etc/rc.d and /var/run. It'd be nice to have it immediately pointed out to you that /etc/vdr is where the configs are, /srv is where the recordings go and /var/cache is where the epg is stored, as the "documentation" in /usr/share/doc of course says nothing about these things.
Try "man vdr". The manual page has been patched to point to the package's installation locations. (Location of epg.data is not too obvious though as it's overridden in /etc/sysconfig/vdr by default, I'll look into improving that.) If something's not and/or you have further improvement ideas -> http://bugzilla.livna.org (so it won't be forgotten).
Some useful rpm commands in case you're not aware of them:
rpm -ql vdr # list all files owned by the vdr package rpm -qc vdr # list all config files of the vdr package rpm -qd vdr # list all documentation files of the vdr package
I'm not sure how standard these locations are at this point of vdr development?
Surely they're not the "standard" of VDR, but more so wrt. the FHS (www.pathname.com/fhs/) and Red Hat derivative distros. That's an intentional choice.
that's exactly why I'm using the ready-built packages (thanks to whoever maintains them!)
rpm -q --changelog vdr | less # thanks ;)
I don't see anything in VDR's documentation or sources that would refer to any firmware paths, so the thing saying the above is probably the DVB driver you're using. I just sent a patch to the DVB mailing list that might improve the related messages and docs a bit.
You are correct, it's the dvb driver:
[...]
My patch was applied, hopefully it will make things more obvious in the future.
On Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 02:14:27 +0200, Otto J. Makela wrote:
I now moved the card (Hauppauge full-feature DVB-C w/CI+CAM) to a new Fedora Core 4 installation with ready-built vdr-1.3.37-0.lvn.1.4 and vdradmin-0.97-1.lvn.6.am3.4.2.4 from Livna.org, but all did not go according to plan.
Things have progressed, I have a working channels.conf and vdr runs. Turned out that having anything but zero in the NID field caused the rather strange problems I was experiencing, my updated channels.conf generator for HTV is available at http://eetis.co.jyu.fi/dvb/
However, it now seems vdr falls over at glitches in the cable (and HTV certainly has enough of these). For example, here is a syslog where it looks like vdr recording progresses to 54 minutes and then quits:
Dec 27 20:50:00 piglet vdr[2423]: timer 18 (34 2050-2210 'Top Gear Xtra') start Dec 27 20:50:00 piglet vdr[2423]: record /srv/vdr/Top_Gear_Xtra/2005-12-27.20.50.80.99.rec Dec 27 20:50:01 piglet vdr[2423]: switching to channel 6 Dec 27 20:50:01 piglet vdr[2423]: info: Channel not available! Dec 27 20:50:02 piglet vdr[2423]: channel 30 (TV1000 Family) event 20:00 'The Secret Agent Club' status 4 Dec 27 20:50:02 piglet vdr[2423]: channel 29 (TV1000 PlusOne) event 20:00 'Red Water' status 4 Dec 27 20:50:02 piglet vdr[2423]: channel 28 (TV1000) event 20:29 'Waiting for - Fakiren fra Bilbao' status 4 Dec 27 20:50:03 piglet vdr[2423]: switching to channel 34 Dec 27 20:50:04 piglet vdr[2423]: stopping recording due to modification of channel 34 Dec 27 20:50:04 piglet vdr[2423]: timer 18 (34 2050-2210 'Top Gear Xtra') stop Dec 27 20:50:04 piglet vdr[2423]: retuning due to modification of channel 34 Dec 27 20:50:04 piglet vdr[2423]: switching to channel 34 Dec 27 20:50:05 piglet vdr[2423]: timer 18 (34 2050-2210 'Top Gear Xtra') start Dec 27 20:50:05 piglet vdr[2423]: record /srv/vdr/Top_Gear_Xtra/2005-12-27.20.50.80.99.rec Dec 27 21:00:07 piglet vdr[2423]: channel 28 (TV1000) event 21:00 'Fakiren från Bilbao' status 4 Dec 27 21:17:26 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 576 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:17:26 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 576 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:17:26 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 464 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:17:26 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 464 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:17:38 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 156 bytes while syncing on next audio frame Dec 27 21:17:38 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 156 bytes while syncing on next audio frame Dec 27 21:17:38 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 116 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:17:38 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 116 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:17:51 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 160 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:17:51 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 16 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:17:51 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 160 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:17:51 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 16 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:17:51 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 96 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:17:51 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 96 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:18:00 piglet vdr[2423]: CAM: Conax 4.00e, 01, 0B00, 04B1 Dec 27 21:27:02 piglet vdr[2423]: channel 30 (TV1000 Family) event 21:27 'Vi väntar på - Southern Cross' status 4 Dec 27 21:29:01 piglet vdr[2423]: channel 29 (TV1000 PlusOne) event 21:29 'Vi väntar på - Fakiren från Bilbao' status 4 Dec 27 21:29:30 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 272 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:29:30 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 272 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:29:40 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 216 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:29:40 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 216 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:29:40 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 56 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:29:40 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 56 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:29:43 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 176 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:29:43 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 176 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:29:43 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 96 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:29:43 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 96 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:29:47 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 760 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:29:47 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 760 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:29:47 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 280 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:29:47 piglet vdr[2423]: cAudioRepacker(0xC0): skipped 280 bytes to sync on next audio frame Dec 27 21:29:57 piglet vdr[2423]: CAM: Conax 4.00e, 01, 0B00, 04B1 Dec 27 21:44:08 piglet vdr[2423]: ERROR: video data stream broken Dec 27 21:44:08 piglet vdr[2423]: initiating emergency exit Dec 27 21:44:08 piglet vdr[2423]: emergency exit requested - shutting down Dec 27 21:44:08 piglet vdr[2423]: timer 18 (34 2050-2210 'Top Gear Xtra') stop Dec 27 21:44:08 piglet vdr[2423]: saved setup to /etc/vdr/setup.conf Dec 27 21:44:09 piglet vdr[2423]: exiting Dec 27 21:44:09 piglet vdr[2423]: emergency exit!
Or am I reading something into this that it isn't? A Bug, A Feature? What are these "stopping recording / retuning due to modification" messages?
-
Anssi Hannula -
Otto J. Makela -
Udo Richter -
Ville Skyttä