dvb tuner adaptor numbers moving around mythtv

Initially the TBS (DVB_T2 card) loaded as adpators 0 and 1; sometimes (hotboot?) however the Hauppage cards would beat the TBS to it. this of course screws up tuner assignments in mythtv.

Although option 2 (see below) seemed less of a hack i only got option 1 to work:

Option 1: Blacklisting some of the drivers then activating later in boot:

edit this file;

nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

adding

#stop the Hauppauge S2 video card loading before
#TBS T2 card has assigned its adaptor numbers:
blacklist cx8800
blacklist cx8802
blacklist cx88-alsa

then add 'modprobe [the above listed modules]' to the file /etc/rc.local which will be activated a few moments after the TBS drivers have loaded

#!/bin/sh -e
# rc.local
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits.
# By default this script does nothing.
 
modprobe cx8800
modprobe cx8802
modprobe cx88-alsa


exit 0

I have done back up copies of these two files: //server//home/markp/techincal/mythtv for future builds

This shows the names of the modules that are associated with pci hardware:
lspci -vnn

e.g. after compiling the TBS driver (see other posting):

04:00.0 Multimedia controller [0480]: Philips Semiconductors SAA7160 [1131:7160] (rev 03)
    Subsystem: Device [6280:0011]
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19
    Memory at ef000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]
    Capabilities: [40] MSI: Enable- Count=1/32 Maskable- 64bit+
    Capabilities: [50] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
    Capabilities: [74] Power Management version 2
    Capabilities: [80] Vendor Specific Information: Len=50 <?>
    Capabilities: [100] Vendor Specific Information: ID=0000 Rev=0 Len=088 <?>
    Kernel driver in use: SAA716x TBS
    Kernel modules: saa716x_tbs-dvb


http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1311795&page=2

Option 2: Would this work?

create a /etc/modprobe.d/options-dvb.conf file
# TBS6280 PCI-e DVB-t2
options saa716x_tbs-dvb adapter_nr=0,1

Nope, resulted in only Nova S2 being seen and adaptor no.s v strange

DVTRR tapes log

Scanning channels mythtv and mysql notes

One of the issues with (UK based) mythtv is the bewildering set of results you get when doing a channel scan with either freeview of freesat tuners. On freeview in particular now that signals from transmitters are being increased (where analogue is switched off) there is the likelihood that a full channel scan will result in at least two full duplicate sets of channels.

One solution for freeview is to scan only the 'tranports' that you want. This is an option in 'scan configuration' of mythbackend-setup. 

but perhaps a neater one (with thanks to http://wiki.stocksy.co.uk/wiki/Tidy_up_MythTV_Channels ) is to always do the full channel scan then simply run this mysql statement, changing the freqid's to match your transmitter:

DELETE FROM channel WHERE (freqid NOT IN (41, 44, 47, 48, 51, 52) AND freqid IS NOT NULL);

You can get the freqid info from here: http://www.ukfree.tv 

Determine which TV transmitter you're getting your signal from. My 6 digital multiplexes are: 41, 44, 47, 48, 51, 52

Liskeard update: muxes now: 21, 22, 25, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, 37


Here's some notes re: the mythconverg mysql database:

The most pertinent table re: ensuring channels get setup up right is 'channel'

I have normally created separate 'sources' (FreeView EIT & FreeSat EIT) for the two types of broadcast (ie DVB-S and DVB-T). In the 'channel' table you can distinguish between DVB-S and T by looking at the sourceid field.

UPDATE channel SET channum=101, visible=1, xmltvid="west-midlands.bbc1.bbc.co.uk"            WHERE sourceid="2" AND serviceid="10301"; #'BBC 1 West Midlands';

field 'channum' is the channel number used by mythtv in the epg and live TV etc. 

field 'channid' - It's confusing!
Explanation: with my 2x DBV-T and 2x DVB-S tuner setup I have (in theory) four tunings of BBC1, myth knows about all four because firstly, the T and S versions are distinguished by having different 'sourceid'. The 2 x BBC1 within the (eg) T tuner are distiguised by having different 'channid'. (these are made unique during tuning when the channel scanner tells you there is a duplication of channid, myths 'suggestion' of the alternative is how it get's set differently). Myth knows they are both BBC1 because they have the same (prescribed) 'serviceid' SID info comes from the channel scan. BBC1 on freesat and freeview will have different SIDs.

An added complication to this is that the DVB-T tuner can get multiple versions of BBC1 (etc) from different parts of the tuning freq (from weaker TXs further away). This is why the freqid field (unique to DVB-T) is helpful in eliminating those weaker versions of channels (the mysql 'DELETE FROM script above sorts this, but you must know which multiplexes your correct main TXer is using)

The above has resulted in a channel_change.sql text file (in markp/technical/mythtv) containing sql statements for channel configuration of a mythtv setup that contains both dvb-t and dbv-s tuners.

Note that this version of the file is for the Yorkshire (Emley Moor) tv transmitter. change regional BBC and ITV channel accordingly (BBC1 and ITV1).

Need to ensure freesat region variations match the freeview ones:
Which freesat ITV1 channel?? - Emley Moor, my freeview source transmits Yorkshire West, the freesat SID of which is 10160.  i have noted some of the regional freesat stations in the file.

fresat SIDs listed here:
http://www.astra2.org/astra1n.html

To bring up the mysql command prompt for the mythtv database:
mysql -u root -p mythconverg;

the statements file can be 'run' from a mysql prompt with the simple command 'source' eg:

mysql> source /path/to/file/channel_change.sql


The statement file didn't work at first and that was because the first statement which sets all channels to a high number and invisible was commented out. Amended it works well and produces a neat list of channels.



Two other issues now.
1. Am I better using rt-grabber (xmltv) for guide info? probably help if I would like to assign both freeview and freesat channels to the same channum, as some say is possible (the EPG looks much neater then)
2. Should I use same channum for freesat and freeview???

DVB-T2 in mytht tv using TBS6280

The TBS 6280 is a dual tuner DVB-T2 card, it has HD freeview ability.


To make it work:

Download the latest version of the driver from the TBS site


wget http://www.tbsdtv.com/download/document/common/tbs-linux-drivers_v130506.zip mkdir tbs-linux-drivers_v130506 cd tbs-linux-drivers_v130506 unzip ../tbs-linux-drivers_v130506.zip

1 extract linux-tbs-drivers.tar.bz2 archive:

# tar xjvf linux-tbs-drivers.tar.bz2


2 go to driver package directory:

# cd linux-tbs-drivers


3 depending on your kernel version and if the kernel is x86 or
x86_64 (check output of 'uname -a') do:


- for x86 kernel 3.x (x86 32 bit installations of kernel 3.x):

# ./v4l/tbs-x86_r3.sh


- for x86 kernel 2.6.x (x86 32 bit installations of kernel 2.6.x):

# ./v4l/tbs-x86.sh


- for any x86_64 kernel (x86 64 bit installations of Linux):

# ./v4l/tbs-x86_64.sh


4 build and install the driver:

# make && make install


5 reboot in order to load the newly installed driver:

# shutdown -r now


6 after reboot check that the newly installed driver is loaded correctly:

# dmesg | grep frontend

OR - follow the instructions from the v4l website:

http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TBS6280#Re-installing_after_a_kernel_upgrade


Don't forget the driver will need building again if the kernel gets updated.

I'm going to prevent kernel updates automatically on this machine so that I don't find the TBS card isn't working one day: set that up using this guide:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/178324/how-to-skip-kernel-update

change owner of select files recursive in a directory

I got myself in a bit of a hole with running Unison without the right switch the other day. Here was the solution though!

http://askubuntu.com/questions/228950/chown-select-files-only

mythtv frontend starts before network up

I've just had this when putting mythfrontend on a nice fujitsu box that obviously runs pretty snappy.

When the FE starts it takes you to the initial config screen I think because the eth0 if is not up in time.

There are various suggestions as to how to fix this but a simple one that worked for me was to:

1. Uninstall the network manager in xmbc (not sure this is essential, but I don't need it):
   

   # apt-get remove network-manager
   

2. Configure /etc/network/interfaces by adding:
   

   auto eth0
   iface eth0 inet dhcp
   

pfSense rebuild, Nov 2012

So everything had worked fine since Feb, (except I never got openvpn working) until my ISP died last Tuesday. Constant rebooting of the BT adsl router (in bridge/modem mode) and the Alix box brought no joy. In the frantic attempts to fix something I screwed up the pfSesne install, mainly when I started removing/moving interfaces.
NB! changing LAN IF will remove things like the static reserved IP info! Should have done a backup!

WiFi WAN

Desparately tried to get the ' WLG-1500SMA WLAN 11G USB ' adpaptor to work as a 2nd WAN IF (driver = zyd0), did eventually, (by using setting 'BSS (infrastructure)' not AP as for the built in ath0 IF) - only connected to the phone when no wifi security! However it seemed quite flakey and would keep falling over after maybe 30min.

The 'fix' for the TalkTalk adsl involved having one of their routers. Couldn't ask why as I was not around when the guy called. So I'm now using this as my WAN eth IF. This uses DHCP on vr0 of pfSense to talktalk rtr.

Rebuilding the IPsec:

All looked ok for IPSec and initially said interface was up, but I sooned managed to make that dissapear! Main problem with above setup was the talktalk router being in front of pfSense and routing/NAT issues for IPSec traffic (known to be complex).

Reinstating the BT Voyager 190 router in bridge mode:

I soon tried to ditch the talktalk router to simplify the ipsec issue but could never get a WAN IF up when set to pppoe as I used to do. Think what happened is that in panic of above I reset the 190 to default firmware (the preinstalled AOL, on: 192.168.1.1). This was never gonna work. Reinstalled the Dynalink 3.29a f/w changed ip to 192.168.0.1 and found the bridge mode settings (did I ever find them before?), buried in sub-menus on the adsl connection 'write' icon. ensure change set 0/38 and vc-mux (not defaults?). Change WAN IF from dhcp to pppoe (why not pppoa?) and immediately ISP IP/DNS becomes the WAN IP info. Hoping IPsec can now be re-estblished as it was before?... Yes it can, when I made the settings match TC...