Known Good Kernel And Driver Combinations¶

TV Headend is entirely dependent on a reliable combination of a kernel, drivers and hardware. In order to help people set up their server, this page will provide a list of combinations that people have found to work.

TBS 6982 DVB-S/S2, Kernel 4.8.0, on Ubuntu 16.04-LTS¶

This combination of kernel and drivers was found to be stable:

• Ubuntu: 16.04.5-LTS
• kernel: 4.8.0-58-lowlatency
• drivers: tbs-linux-drivers_v170330.zip
• TV Headend: 4.3-1292~g9b9ee68~xenial

The key factor in making the TBS card work was to ensure MSI Interrupts were enabled when the kernel module loads.

Firstly, use "dpkg \-l | grep linux\-" to list the linux kernel and associated packages.
Use "dpkg -r" to remove kernel packages, and use "dpkg -P" to then purge everything. Check /boot remove any left over vmlinux and init.rd files etc; then likewise clean out /lib/modules. DO NOT REBOOT at any time when you have no kernel installed!

Then install the kernel and associated packages, to get to the following state

ii  linux-headers-4.8.0-58                 4.8.0-58.63~16.04.1                        all          Header files related to Linux kernel version 4.8.0
ii  linux-headers-4.8.0-58-lowlatency      4.8.0-58.63~16.04.1                        amd64        Linux kernel headers for version 4.8.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
ii  linux-hwe-tools-4.8.0-58               4.8.0-58.63~16.04.1                        amd64        Linux kernel version specific tools for version 4.8.0-58
ii  linux-image-4.8.0-58-lowlatency        4.8.0-58.63~16.04.1                        amd64        Linux kernel image for version 4.8.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
ii  linux-signed-image-4.8.0-58-lowlatency 4.8.0-58.63~16.04.1                        amd64        Signed kernel image lowlatency
ii  linux-tools-4.8.0-58-lowlatency        4.8.0-58.63~16.04.1                        amd64        Linux kernel version specific tools for version 4.8.0-58

Then install the driver supplied by TBS. Create a script containing this:

#!/bin/bash

#VER="180822" 
#ZIPFILE="tbs-open-linux-drivers_v$VER.zip" 
#TARFILE=media_build-2018-0822.tar.bz2

VER="170330" 
ZIPFILE="tbs-linux-drivers_v170330.zip" 
TARFILE=linux-tbs-drivers.tar.bz2

DIR=/home/build
mkdir -p "$DIR" 
cd "$DIR" 

if [ ! -f "$ZIPFILE" ] ; then
       wget "https://www.tbsiptv.com/download/common/$ZIPFILE" 
fi

mkdir -p "$DIR/tbs_$VER" 
cd "$DIR/tbs_$VER" 

pwd
ls -la "../$ZIPFILE" 
unzip "../$ZIPFILE" 

tar jxvf "$TARFILE" 
cd linux-tbs-drivers  
./v4l/tbs-x86_64.sh  
make -j4  
make install

And execute it.

Finally, set the driver to use MSI Interrupts by creating a file called "/etc/modprobe.d/tbs.conf" containing these lines:

options tbs_pcie-dvb tbs_int_type=1
options saa716x_tbs-dvb int_type=1

It should now be possible to reboot your computer. Afterwards, check the kernel module is loaded thus:

$ lsmod | egrep "saa|dvb" 
saa716x_tbs_dvb        77824  0

And check that the interrupts are MSI by checking the /proc/interrupts, like this:

$ egrep -i "saa|dvb" /proc/interrupts  
31:      29757          0          0          0   PCI-MSI 1572864-edge      SAA716x Core

Also see this:
https://tvheadend.org/boards/5/topics/32496?r=34042#message-34042