Tvheadend takes long to start, due to 'unable to open /dev/dvb/adapterN/frontend1'

Hi All,

I have Tvheadend on a RPi3 and, from power-on to TV channels available takes now about 4 minutes.
There are two 'Anysee E30 TC Plus' USB tuners connected.
I have not found others having the same issue so far.

Startup of OpenELEC (6.0.3) with Tvheadend (HTS Tvheadend 4.0.8 ~ OpenELEC Tvh-addon v6.0.4):

0:15 Switch on of TV
0:30 OpenELEC GUI on screen
0:35 CEC available (can use remote)
0:50 Can ping/ssh to the RPi
3:50 PVR connected
4:00 PVR backend loaded clients (TV available)

From /storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.multimedia.tvheadend/service.log I suspect that the delay is caused by the following two ERROR events:

2016-04-21 19:26:12.789 [   INFO] linuxdvb: adapter added /dev/dvb/adapter1
2016-04-21 19:27:55.453 [  ERROR] linuxdvb: unable to open /dev/dvb/adapter1/frontend1
2016-04-21 19:27:56.022 [   INFO] linuxdvb: adapter added /dev/dvb/adapter0
2016-04-21 19:29:38.690 [  ERROR] linuxdvb: unable to open /dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend1

Delta time 19:26:12-19:27:55 = 1:43
Delta time 19:27:56-19:29:38 = 1:42
Are these timeouts?
A tail -f on service.log shows that directly after the second ERROR (at 19:29:38.690) the TV/Radio channels load, and become available.

From the create date in /dev/dvb/adapter*/ I understand that these device nodes are created very early after boot, before there is a NTP sync (year is still 1970).
Guess the Anysee E30 doesn't respond via the character devices (anymore)?

/dev/dvb/adapter1/frontend1 and /dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend1 are the device nodes for the DVB-T.
I don't use DVB-T, only DVB-C for obtaining TV and Radio channels.
Can I somehow prevent the delay related to DVB-T e.g. by preventing the driver from being used?

I suspect this issue was not present at initial use of this setup (first number of startups when TVheadend was not yet properly configured). Because in the beginning I did see both DVB-T adapters (Zarlink ZL10353 DVB-T) in the Web-GUI (Configuration>DVB Inputs>TV adapters). Than one disappeared from the tree, and (a day or 4 or so) later (another ~day or 4) the second also disappeared from the explorer tree. Moving the USB tuners to other USB ports doesn't help.

from dmesg:

[    6.639895] usb 1-1.5: DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Philips TDA10023 DVB-C)...
[    6.643052] usb 1-1.5: DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 1 (Zarlink ZL10353 DVB-T)...
<snip>
[    6.805317] usb 1-1.4: DVB: registering adapter 1 frontend 0 (Philips TDA10023 DVB-C)...
[    6.805477] usb 1-1.4: DVB: registering adapter 1 frontend 1 (Zarlink ZL10353 DVB-T)...

# ls -la /dev/dvb/adapter*/*
crw-rw----    1 root     video     212,   4 Jan  1  1970 /dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0
crw-rw----    1 root     video     212,   5 Jan  1  1970 /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0
crw-rw----    1 root     video     212,   3 Jan  1  1970 /dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0
crw-rw----    1 root     video     212,  19 Jan  1  1970 /dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend1
crw-rw----    1 root     video     212,   7 Jan  1  1970 /dev/dvb/adapter0/net0
crw-rw----    1 root     video     212,  68 Jan  1  1970 /dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0
crw-rw----    1 root     video     212,  69 Jan  1  1970 /dev/dvb/adapter1/dvr0
crw-rw----    1 root     video     212,  67 Jan  1  1970 /dev/dvb/adapter1/frontend0
crw-rw----    1 root     video     212,  83 Jan  1  1970 /dev/dvb/adapter1/frontend1
crw-rw----    1 root     video     212,  71 Jan  1  1970 /dev/dvb/adapter1/net0

Replies (2)

RE: Tvheadend takes long to start, due to 'unable to open /dev/dvb/adapterN/frontend1' - Added by Mark Clarkstone over 8 years ago

Ron Hermsen wrote:

Hi All,

I have Tvheadend on a RPi3 and, from power-on to TV channels available takes now about 4 minutes.
There are two 'Anysee E30 TC Plus' USB tuners connected.
I have not found others having the same issue so far.

Startup of OpenELEC (6.0.3) with Tvheadend (HTS Tvheadend 4.0.8 ~ OpenELEC Tvh-addon v6.0.4):
[...]

From /storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.multimedia.tvheadend/service.log I suspect that the delay is caused by the following two ERROR events:
[...]

Delta time 19:26:12-19:27:55 = 1:43
Delta time 19:27:56-19:29:38 = 1:42
Are these timeouts?
A tail -f on service.log shows that directly after the second ERROR (at 19:29:38.690) the TV/Radio channels load, and become available.

From the create date in /dev/dvb/adapter*/ I understand that these device nodes are created very early after boot, before there is a NTP sync (year is still 1970).
Guess the Anysee E30 doesn't respond via the character devices (anymore)?

/dev/dvb/adapter1/frontend1 and /dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend1 are the device nodes for the DVB-T.
I don't use DVB-T, only DVB-C for obtaining TV and Radio channels.
Can I somehow prevent the delay related to DVB-T e.g. by preventing the driver from being used?

You can try disabling the zarlink by doing:

echo "blacklist zl10353" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/zarlink.conf
reboot

Be warned that if the Philips driver relies on the zarlink it won't get loaded.

EDIT, openelec sorry, so you'd want to put the above into /storage/.config/modprobe.d/zl10353.conf

I suspect this issue was not present at initial use of this setup (first number of startups when TVheadend was not yet properly configured). Because in the beginning I did see both DVB-T adapters (Zarlink ZL10353 DVB-T) in the Web-GUI (Configuration>DVB Inputs>TV adapters). Than one disappeared from the tree, and (a day or 4 or so) later (another ~day or 4) the second also disappeared from the explorer tree. Moving the USB tuners to other USB ports doesn't help.

from dmesg:
[...]

[...]

RE: Tvheadend takes long to start, due to 'unable to open /dev/dvb/adapterN/frontend1' - Added by Ron Hermsen over 8 years ago

Hi Mark,

Thanks a lot.
Startup time is now less than 30 seconds!!
(TV is even there before CEC is available)

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