Tvheadend

I have just bought a TBS6982 card and I am looking for some help/advice as to getting the opensource driver to work with it.

I am running on Ubuntu server 12.04 LTS 64 bit. I have kernel 3.2.0-59-generic

The card is listed as follows:

01:00.0 Multimedia controller: Philips Semiconductors SAA7160 (rev 03)
Subsystem: Device 6982:0002
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 255
Memory at fdc00000 (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

and appears to be working in that I can compile the supplied drivers, and get the /dev/dvb devices created ok. However, these do not appear to work with the mythtv backend.

But when I try to compile the open source driver as follows:

git clone --depth=1 git://linuxtv.org/media_build.git
cd media_build
./build
make install

I dont get any /dev/dvb nodes created. I dont see any error messages and I cant see anything in the dmesg log.

All help gratefully received (and please say if I am doing something very stupid)

12.04, you say... see here:

https://tvheadend.org/boards/5/topics/10995?r=11001#message-11001

and the link I posted in that thread:

http://www.mythtvtalk.com/tbs6284-drivers-not-working-12-04-3-lts-kernel-3-8-0-32-generic-16775/

Hardly definitive, especially when kernels vary so much, but...

You could also try installing a later kernel: while this is hardly a zero-risk approach, it's less risky/disruptive than a whole new OS. I seem to recall that I moved from 3.2 to 3.5 on my LTS system by installing the Enablement Stack (actually, to fix a system freeze that I was getting, but it's intended to improve hardware support so might be worth a go as it's officially supported versus, say, trying to move to 3.13 from yesterday!).

Firstly -- thanks for your time in helping me. It is very much appreciated.

So what I have done, so far is:

I sort of followed your advice and upgraded to Ubuntu-13.10, and I am now running kernel 3.11.0-17-generic (still 64 bit). Actually this was remarkably trouble free!

I then tried installing the open source drivers. As before, all seems to go smoothly (no compile error messages or anything), but when I reboot, still no /dev/dvb directory. Also no errors that I could find in syslog or dmesg.

I then tried installing the drivers supplied with the card (tbs-linux-drivers_v130901.zip) and a more recent version from TBS' website (tbs-linux-drivers_v140210.zip). Again these both seem to compile fine and no error messages. However, when I reboot the machine, I get the magic /dev/dvb directory.

I then try to setup the mythtv backend. When I get to the tuner section, it auto-selects "DVB-T/S/C, ATSC or ISDB-T tuner card" but underneath it states "Could not get infor for card /dev/dvb/adaptor0/frontend/0. Subtype: unknown error". Various places I have googled say that this is a drive error.

Picking up on your references, there is no mention of "tainted" in the logs. I now have the kernel "3.11.0-17-generic" and the headers "linux-headers-3.11.0-17-generic" installed.

So, again, all advice greatfully recieved. In particular:

• Is there a general problem in using the TBS drivers with mythtv? and
• Am I doing something stupid with the open source drivers (did the commands I used download the correct driver for the TBS 6981SE?)

Many thanks.

I can't help with MythTV, I'm afraid - I abandoned it and moved to tvheadend a couple of years ago - indeed, this is a tvheadend forum, so maybe your question would be better directed to a Myth forum. Unless you want to come over to tvheadend with us instead, of course :-)

If you want to do some testing, you might find scan or w_scan useful, as they're command-line tools that can query the adapter and see whether it's working properly, see if it can tune, etc. The package is linuxtv-dvb-apps, I think.

This also looked promising: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=158027 - whether it applies to 'buntu, I don't know. It suggests the kernels > 3.9 should be okay, and you're on 3.11, so it could be a dead end.

I suspect the "tainted" is related to the open source drivers, so perhaps the "real" TBS drivers don't have that.

I probably should not admit this, but I hadn't realized that Tvheadend wasn't part of MtyhTV. I will go to the back of the class now.

I have actually tried installing TVheadend, which, like MythTV finds the card, but TVheadend doesnt find any services when it scans the channels (and the Tvheadend is nice to use!). I think that this must be an issue with the card's driver.

I am going to have another go at the open source driver...

Hi,

This is an oldish thread, and I'm not currently using THE, but MythTV. However, I thought it might be worth me posting as I've just bought a TBS6982.

Playing through mplayer works on frontend0, but only works on frontend1 if not preceded by frontend0 (I.e. straight from reboot or something).

When using myth, changing to any sources related to frontend1 causes total machine freeze.

I'll take a look at the alternative drivers on git.

If anyone has any recent updates that might help me, that'd be grand.

Cheers

Sorry. I gave up and bought a SKY-952 which I've found really good.

N

Failure is a bit more graceful in xbmc (a client elsewhere in the house), if recording it just won't change channel.

OK, thanks for the update

OK, i have things working nicely now.

The first issue was a faulty card. This i returned (with no fuss or expense, thanks ccl) for a replacement.

The replacement still didn't want to record on two multiplexes simultaneously.

I went back to bare metal and switched to Ubuntu. This worked straight away.

I conclude there was some deficiency, or more likely conflict, in Mint 17 (I did rm the kernel/.../media folder in every case before building the card drivers, so it wasn't a basic driver conflict).

HTH someone

Congratulations.

Just for interest as I failed to do this (I got it to work for a few days at a time and then it would fail), which version of Ubuntu were you using? I failed on 14.04.1, 64 bit, using the 3.13 kernel, and which version of the driver did you use?

Nick Sillito wrote:

Sorry. I gave up and bought a SKY-952 which I've found really good.

N

Nick, Please can you confirm which OS you are using? Was initially going to use a TBS6982 but after reading this thread I think I will use a Dual SKY S952 with Ubuntu (either 12.04 or 14.04)
Thanks

I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 server 64 bit