RTL2831U wont compile against 2.6.38

Hi there,

I tried to get an RTL2831U dvb-t usb-stick running with a more recent kernel (2.6.38) and failed.

The hg respository ~jhoogenraad/rtl2831-r2 aborts on countless drivers, the rc coding seem have to changed a lot since it got touched the last time.

The hg respository ~anttip/rtl2831u wont compile as well, since its even older.

The recent git respositories for media_tree and anttip dont contain drivers for the rtl2831u.

Has this device been abandoned, or is anyone working on it?

greetings,
Thomas

There are still people working on it and there is new sources, e.g. look at
http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-media/msg24890.html
at the very bottom. Worked like a charm at my system with kernel 2.6.39.

I think, there will be announcements later at
http://wiki.zeratul.org/doku.php?id=linux:v4l:realtek:start

Greetings from Braunschweig, Germany.
Sascha

Sascha: Thanks for the links

Would you know how to contact poma ?
http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-media/msg24890.html

I will be getting more info from Realtek soon.
I did not realize that they were putting out updated drivers.

Once the status becomes more clear, I'll update
http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Realtek_RTL2831U

Jan Hoogenraad
Hoogenraad Interface Services
Postbus 2717
3500 GS Utrecht

The mailinglist archive where poma had written is new to me, no sorry. Zdenek Stybla hosts the website he advised to me.

When I contacted Zdenek he made contact to a guy from realtek which in return sent us their (?) new drivers - you should contact Zdenek.

I don't work on the rtl2831 sources I'd like to use them :-)

I am looking forward to have current sources at v4l or at least updated information at the info page at linuxtv.org.

Greetings from Braunschweig, Germany.
Sascha

Hi again,

i managed to merge the driver with a media_build snapshot by hand, and managed to get it loaded without errors. But now where I looked more closely to the files, I noticed something.

The driver refered mentions RTL2832u and some following versions, but it _dont_ mention RTL2831u at all. Also the card I got contains the tuners mxl5005, mt2060 and qt1010, while this driver contains files for mxl5007 and mt2063.

Teach me wrong, but it looks like the RTL2381u had been forgotten when this driver got made ;-)

Greeting,
Thomas

I know ;)
Really, the right person to contact:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.drivers.video-input-infrastructure/26131
http://news.gmane.org/find-root.php?message_id=%3c1291503774.1874.90.camel%40maxim%2dlaptop%3e

rgds,
poma

It is Maxim who have been hacking with RTL2832/RTL2832U lately. But I think he have given up since no noise anymore.

I have taken now it again up to my desk and have been hacking two days now. Currently I am working with RTL2830 demod driver, I started it from scratch. Take sniffs, make scripts to generate code from USB traffic, copy pasted that to driver skeleton and now I have picture. Just implement all one-by-one until ready :-) I think I will implement it as minimum possible, no any signal statistic counters - lets add those later if someone wants to do that.

USB-bridge part is rather OK as I did earlier and it is working with RTL2831U and RTL2832U at least. No remote support yet.

I hope someone else would make missing driver for RTL2832U demod still...

Antti

http://palosaari.fi/

Antti:

You are great !

So as far as I am concerned, it would be great if one of the others could use up your work on the USB bridge, and add the IR remote interface, based on the LIRC framework. It actually should yield little code, and mainly requires a) understanding of LIRC and b) comparing code tables to that the in-kernel code tables can be re-used.

Note that Zdenek Styblik seems to have received updates from Realtek THIS month
http://wiki.zeratul.org/doku.php?id=linux:v4l:realtek:start

He has posted a Ver 2.2.0 of the driver at:
http://www.turnovfree.net/~stybla/linux/v4l-dvb/lv5tdlx/

It supports the RTL2832U and RTL2836 and way more tuners (MT2266 FC2580 TUA9001 and MXL5007T E4000 FC0012 tda18272 fc0013)

However, the code is not split up.

Jan Hoogenraad
Hoogenraad Interface Services
Postbus 2717
3500 GS Utrecht

2011/6/21 Jan Hoogenraad <[email protected]>:

sorry for the noise , but i guess you mean rc-core not Lirc

Thanks. Do you know more about this subject ?

We do have specs about the chipset, but

http://linuxtv.org/downloads/v4l-dvb-apis/remote_controllers.html#Remote_controllers_Intro

only mentions lirc, not rc-core.
This is about where my knowledge stops, however.

rc-core is only mentioned shortly in:
http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Remote_Controllers

Jan Hoogenraad
Hoogenraad Interface Services
Postbus 2717
3500 GS Utrecht

I think/hope Jarod can comment on this - i just know that new remotes should use rc-core, as this is the "new thing" for this. I'm no developer whatsoever :)

No problem there, I already know rather well how rc-core is working :) Will do that.

RTL2830 demod driver seems to be now rather OK, missing all statistics as I planned, but otherwise rather ready. Seems to have some more work for getting statistic since looks like it polls huge amount of regs when updating those.

I am now finalizing that USB-bridge part. Do you have idea if that should be called;

as used chipset names:
dvb_usb_rtl2831u
dvb_usb_rtl2832u
dvb_usb_rtl2836u
dvb_usb_rtl2840u

or just name it as generic:
dvb_usb_rtl28xxu
dvb_usb_rtl2800u

or some other.

rtl28xxu or rtl2800u sounds best for me.

regards
Antti

http://palosaari.fi/

Fine!

In about month, after exams, I hope I will work on this to finish at least RTL2832/FC0012.

For reference, this is the code I did so far.

Best regards,
Maxim Levitsky

Can I put this somewhere in the git archive at the linuxtv site, so that we can share and have version control ?

Jan Hoogenraad
Hoogenraad Interface Services
Postbus 2717
3500 GS Utrecht

Hello
RTL2831U driver is now available here "realtek" branch:
http://git.linuxtv.org/anttip/media_tree.git

From my side it is ready for merge.

RTL2830 DVB-T demod
===================
Driver is very limited, it basically just works, no any statistics. That's written totally from the scratch.

RTL28XXU DVB USB
================
I think it is also almost fully written from the scratch, but not sure since it have been so loooong under the development. At least register definitions are from Realtek driver. Jan could you now find out copyrights, SOBs, etc. are correct? And how that should be merge...

I wonder Maxim can add support for RTL2832U to RTL28XXU DVB USB. It should not be much work. I tested it with my RTL2832U device and some minor changes were needed. Remote controller seems to be only which is totally different between RTL2831U and RTL2832U (and later).

regards
Antti

http://palosaari.fi/

Hello,
I have done some updates. MXL5005S based RTL2831U devices didn't worked due to bug. That's main visible change. Secondly I added basic support for RTL2832U to rtl28xx driver. And implemented I2C as I see it really is, I think it is almost perfect now. It works fine my RTL2832U device with stubbed demod and tuner drivers.

Next weeks I will hack most likely Anysee, but when I feel bored of Anysee, I will switch back to rtl28xx driver :p

regards
Antti

http://palosaari.fi/

Hi,

With the latest driver my card never gets a signal lock, not even once. As before there are no error messages. It does always probe correctly now though.

Alistair Buxton
[email protected]

I tracked this down to:

http://git.linuxtv.org/anttip/media_tree.git/commit/e5d3e4f27f0cf71c29d12ce39752195d8994dea3

and to this specific change:

@@ -459,21 +563,14 @@ static int rtl28xxu_power_ctrl(struct dvb_usb_device *d, int onoff)

                sys0 = sys0 & 0x0f;
                sys0 |= 0xe0;
        } else {

-
-#if 0 /* keep */
/*
* FIXME: Use .fe_ioctl_override() to prevent demod

-                * IOCTLs in case of device is powered off.
-                *
-                * For now we cannot power off device because most FE IOCTLs
-                * can be performed only when device is powered.
-                * Using IOCTLs when device is powered off will result errors
-                * because register access to demod fails.
+                * IOCTLs in case of device is powered off. Or change
+                * RTL2830 demod not perform requestesd IOCTL & IO when sleep.
                 */
                gpio &= (~0x01); /* GPIO0 = 0 */
                gpio |= 0x10; /* GPIO4 = 1 */
                sys0 = sys0 & (~0xc0);
-#endif
        }

        deb_info("%s: WR SYS0=%02x GPIO_OUT_VAL=%02x\n", __func__, sys0, gpio);

Commenting those three lines makes the driver work again. Don't know yet if it will keep working for longer than a couple of days.

Alistair Buxton
[email protected]

I suspect it is tuner GPIO. It is not clear which GPIO pins are used for tuner reset. I should find this out soon. Most likely MXL5005S tuner reset have connected to different GPIO than MT2060 design I have.

Could you test commenting out only gpio change to see if it helps?

regards
Antti

http://palosaari.fi/

After a couple of days the card locked up again just like before. Are there more gpio bits I need to comment? The LED GPIO is definitely right. Also, is there a way to check the status of the GPIO from userspace, without recompiling the module? Like maybe with i2c-dev or something?

Alistair Buxton
[email protected]

I have found something new about this. It turns out my MythTV tuning was incorrect as some channels had changed frequency due to the analogue switch-off. The card would freeze up when tuning to one of these channels. For some reason, this would prevent any further tuning on it. So after MythTV tried to record from one of these channels, it would prevent anything from being recorded on any channel.

I have retuned and I haven't experienced any more lock-ups since about 1 week.

Alistair Buxton
[email protected]

Hi Sascha,

this solution is not working for me. When compiling and installing the "media_build", it works fine. Here in combination with a Digivox Duo Stick:

# lsmod | grep dvb
dvb_usb_af9015         21067  5
dvb_usb                22011  1 dvb_usb_af9015
dvb_core               67624  1 dvb_usb
rc_core                17813  12
dvb_usb_af9015,ir_lirc_codec,ir_sony_decoder,ir_jvc_decoder,ir_rc6_decoder,dvb_usb,ir_rc5_decoder,rc_imon_pad,ir_nec_decoder,imon
i2c_core               18989  6 mxl5005s,af9013,nvidia,dvb_usb_af9015,dvb_usb,i2c_nforce2
usbcore                99058  11
lirc_imon,dvb_usb_af9015,dvb_usb,usbhid,imon,usb_storage,uas,ohci_hcd,ehci_hcd

One very strange behavior is, when theres no dvb-adapter at all, the system loads dvb_ttpci, but no such card is installed, nor gets any /dev/dvb/ created or anything logged in dmsg:

# lsmod  | grep dvb
dvb_ttpci              71007  0
dvb_core               67624  1 dvb_ttpci
saa7146_vv             39558  1 dvb_ttpci
saa7146                17148  2 dvb_ttpci,saa7146_vv
ttpci_eeprom           12344  1 dvb_ttpci
i2c_core               18989  5 dvb_ttpci,videodev,ttpci_eeprom,nvidia,i2c_nforce2

Building and installing "new_build" as suggested, ends up with

# dmesg | grep dvb
[   26.828625] dvb_ttpci: Unknown symbol dvb_net_init (err 0)
[   26.830730] dvb_ttpci: Unknown symbol dvb_net_release (err 0)

Here no dvb-adapter was attached, now insert the rtl2831u ...

[  161.752088] usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
[  161.886020] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=14aa, idProduct=0160
[  161.886030] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[  161.886036] usb 1-2: Product: DTV Receiver
[  161.886041] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: DTV Receiver
[  161.886046] usb 1-2: SerialNumber: 0000000000067936

... device got identified, but no module was loaded at all, doing it by hand ...

# modprobe -v dvb-usb-rtl2832u
WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/usbhid, it will be ignored in a future release.
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.38-bpo.2-686/kernel/drivers/media/dvb/dvb-usb/dvb-usb.ko
WARNING: Error inserting dvb_usb
(/lib/modules/2.6.38-bpo.2-686/kernel/drivers/media/dvb/dvb-usb/dvb-usb.ko): Invalid argument
FATAL: Error inserting dvb_usb_rtl2832u
(/lib/modules/2.6.38-bpo.2-686/kernel/drivers/media/dvb/dvb-usb/dvb-usb-rtl2832u.ko): Invalid argument

lets ignore the usbhid warning, its made out of comments anyway, checking dmsg ...

[  296.652984] dvb_usb: disagrees about version of symbol rc_register_device
[  296.652997] dvb_usb: Unknown symbol rc_register_device (err -22)
[  296.654001] dvb_usb: disagrees about version of symbol rc_free_device
[  296.654007] dvb_usb: Unknown symbol rc_free_device (err -22)
[  296.654823] dvb_usb: disagrees about version of symbol rc_allocate_device
[  296.654828] dvb_usb: Unknown symbol rc_allocate_device (err -22)
[  296.656427] dvb_usb: disagrees about version of symbol rc_unregister_device
[  296.656440] dvb_usb: Unknown symbol rc_unregister_device (err -22)

problem. The rtl2831u adapter identifies as following and is labeled "Digitus DA-70781-B/A1" and worked fine with Jan Hoogenraads driver under 2.6.32.

lsusb -v -s 001:004

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 14aa:0160 WideView Technology Inc. Device Descriptor:
bLength 18
bDescriptorType 1
bcdUSB 2.00

  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0
  bDeviceProtocol         0
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x14aa WideView Technology Inc.
  idProduct          0x0160
  bcdDevice            1.00
  iManufacturer           1 DTV Receiver
  iProduct                2 DTV Receiver
  iSerial                 3 0000000000067936
  bNumConfigurations      1

Configuration Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 2
wTotalLength 41
bNumInterfaces 1
bConfigurationValue 1
iConfiguration 4 USB2.0-Bulk&Iso
bmAttributes 0xa0
(Bus Powered)
Remote Wakeup
MaxPower 500mA
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 0
bAlternateSetting 0
bNumEndpoints 1
bInterfaceClass 255 Vendor Specific Class
bInterfaceSubClass 255 Vendor Specific Subclass
bInterfaceProtocol 255 Vendor Specific Protocol
iInterface 5 Bulk-In, Interface
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN
bmAttributes 2
Transfer Type Bulk
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0200 1x 512 bytes
bInterval 0
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 0
bAlternateSetting 1
bNumEndpoints 1
bInterfaceClass 255 Vendor Specific Class
bInterfaceSubClass 255 Vendor Specific Subclass
bInterfaceProtocol 255 Vendor Specific Protocol
iInterface 6 Iso-In, Interface
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN
bmAttributes 1
Transfer Type Isochronous
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x03ac 1x 940 bytes
bInterval 1
Device Qualifier (for other device speed):
bLength 10
bDescriptorType 6
bcdUSB 2.00

  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0
  bDeviceProtocol         0

bMaxPacketSize0 64
bNumConfigurations 2
Device Status: 0x0000
(Bus Powered)

Finally the kernel version (the only one installed):

# uname -a
Linux xbmc 2.6.38-bpo.2-686 #1 SMP Tue Jun 14 11:43:18 UTC 2011 i686 GNU/Linux

Greetings, from Germany as well ;-)
Thomas

means, there is unresolved dependencies at your kernel or false dependencies in the module.

My stick works with those google hosted new driver sources and I have no use for lirc, so nothing about it at the following lines, they are stripped, too:

~ # lsusb -v
Bus 001 Device 021: ID 1d19:1101 Dexatek Technology Ltd. DK DVB-T Dongle Device Descriptor:
bLength 18
bDescriptorType 1
bcdUSB 2.00

  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0
  bDeviceProtocol         0
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x1d19 Dexatek Technology Ltd.
  idProduct          0x1101 DK DVB-T Dongle
  bcdDevice            1.00
  iManufacturer           1 Realtek
  iProduct                2 Rtl2832UDVB
  iSerial                 3 0
  bNumConfigurations      1

Configuration Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 2
wTotalLength 34
bNumInterfaces 2
bConfigurationValue 1
iConfiguration 4 USB2.0-Bulk&Iso
bmAttributes 0xa0
(Bus Powered)
Remote Wakeup
MaxPower 500mA
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 0
bAlternateSetting 0
bNumEndpoints 1
bInterfaceClass 255 Vendor Specific Class
bInterfaceSubClass 255 Vendor Specific Subclass
bInterfaceProtocol 255 Vendor Specific Protocol
iInterface 5 Bulk-In, Interface
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN
bmAttributes 2
Transfer Type Bulk
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0200 1x 512 bytes
bInterval 0
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 1
bAlternateSetting 0
bNumEndpoints 0
bInterfaceClass 255 Vendor Specific Class
bInterfaceSubClass 255 Vendor Specific Subclass
bInterfaceProtocol 255 Vendor Specific Protocol
iInterface 5 Bulk-In, Interface
Device Qualifier (for other device speed):
bLength 10
bDescriptorType 6
bcdUSB 2.00

  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0
  bDeviceProtocol         0

bMaxPacketSize0 64
bNumConfigurations 2
Device Status: 0x0000
(Bus Powered)

~ # lsmod | grep dvb

dvb_usb_rtl2832u      190302  0
dvb_usb                17272  1 dvb_usb_rtl2832u
dvb_core               69295  1 dvb_usb
rc_core                15790  2 dvb_usb

~ # dmesg
usb 1-6: new high speed USB device number 20 using ehci_hcd hub 1-6:1.0: USB hub found
hub 1-6:1.0: 4 ports detected
usb 1-6.3: new high speed USB device number 21 using ehci_hcd
dvb-usb: found a 'DK DVBT DONGLE' in warm state.
dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
DVB: registering new adapter (DK DVBT DONGLE)
DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Realtek DVB-T RTL2832)...
dvb-usb: DK DVBT DONGLE successfully initialized and connected.
dvb-usb: found a 'DK DVBT DONGLE' in warm state.
dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
DVB: registering new adapter (DK DVBT DONGLE)
DVB: registering adapter 1 frontend 0 (Realtek DVB-T RTL2832)...
dvb-usb: DK DVBT DONGLE successfully initialized and connected.

Yes, works at no powered four port USB-2.0 mini hub without problems.

~ # uname -a
Linux killerghost 2.6.39-gentoo-r1 #1 SMP Fri Jun 10 12:16:38 CEST 2011 x86_64 Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU 330 @ 1.60GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

Greetings from Braunschweig, Germany.
Sascha

I already resolved the symbol thing. Your lsusb explains a lot, you have a RTl2832, while I have the RTL2831 which seem to be Revision 4 of the RTL2830.

However, there seem to be big similarities between all those chips. It might be not that hard for the contributors of this driver to add support for the early chips as well. Maybe Jan can shade some light on it, since he wrote the initial RTL2831 driver. In any case I may help with testing it.

I think there is no such revision 4 RTL2830 which is RTL2831. I think you misunderstand. There is DVB-T demods RTL2830 and RTL2832. Then there is USB-bridge let's call it RTL28xxU. When you put USB-bridge and demod together you get chips called RTL2831U (USB-bridge + RTL2830 demod) and RTL2832U (USB-bridge + RTL2832 demod).

Also many other Realtek demods exits which uses same USB-bridge.

regards
Antti

http://palosaari.fi/