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DVB-S / S2 reception issues when upgrading to 2.6.28-6

DISCUSSION Nicolas Noirbent 1 participant 1 message Apr 17, 2009 Media (V4L/DVB)

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Hi,

Not sure if this is a bug or intended behaviour, but we're having some reception issues on some recent DVB-S/S2 cards (Hauppauge Nova S-Plus and HVR-4000 Lite) after upgrading from 2.6.19-7 to 2.6.28-6 (Vanilla kernel.org versions)

Steps to reproduce:

szap -c /etc/dvb/transponders <sat> -x
dvbsnoop -adapter 0 -b <PID> | pv > /dev/null

=> nothing

python -c "import time; f = file('/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0'); time.sleep(1)"

=> Transfer running again

With Debian packages:
dvb-apps 1.1.1+rev1207-4
dvbsnoop 1.4.50-2

Since we basically want constant reception on the DVB network interface, we deactivated the power-saving features of the DVB cards:

# cat /etc/modprobe.d/dvb-driver
options dvb_core dvb_shutdown_timeout=0 dvb_powerdown_on_sleep=0
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From what I can gather, only the most recent cards (the HVR4000 and

the Nova S-Plus) display this kind of behaviour. It would seem the power-saving features available on these newer types of card with more recent drivers could be the cause of the problem: despite the module options, they'd still power off when the frontend is released (once again, this is pure speculation on my part).

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From time to time, we also lose satellite reception, and the following

error appears in kern.log:
cx8802_start_dma() Failed. Unsupported value in .mpeg (0x00000001)

Running szap continuously solves the problem, but it seems like an ugly hack to get this working, especially knowing it worked correctly in 2.6.19-7.

Cheers,

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Nicolas Noirbent - Core Software Developer
SmartJog SAS - www.smartjog.com - A TDF Group Company
Office: 27, blvd Hippolyte Marques 94200 Ivry-sur-Seine - France EU
Phone: +33 (0)1 5868 6234