I have 13.37 installed on three PCs. Two nvidia (propriertary driver from Slackbuilds) and one ATI (radeon dirver). Kaffeine 1.1 installed from Slackbuild on all three machines. Runs fine on the ATI box and on one of the nvidia boxes, but fails to start (or provide any messages when command-line started) on the other nvidia box.

The box on which it will not start is also the box that has a DVB card in it - which is why I particularly want kaffeine to run there as it has a really easy interface to the TV card which ran just fine under Slack 13.1.

My gut feeling it that the problem is connected to the presence of the TV card which is somehow srewing up initialisation of kaffeine, but (other than removing the card physically) I am not sure how to test this or test whether the card is working. lspci and dmesg shows that it has recognised during boot-up.

Any ideas on how I should investigate this?

Or on how I can bypass the problem by configuring vlc (which runs fine for dvds and video clips) to view DVB output?

I posted on a kaffeine forum but no sign of life there.

Thanks

Hi

Try to use kaffeine 1.2.2 from Slacky repository.

Thanks for this information - I will try installing this newer version.

Kaffeine is indeed handy for watching TV on a PC.

As you mentioned, an easy go-no-go test is to temporarily remove the capture card and see whether Kaffeine starts. Inconvenient if the case is under a desk, but nonetheless a quick and easy test.

Side note: When no capture card is installed or the capture card is in use by another app, Kaffeine will not display the Digital TV button on the main interface. In either case Kaffeine still should start.

The stock Slackware comes with MPlayer and Xine, both of which support digital TV capture cards. Using either at least will inform you whether the capture card is working.

The strace command often is useful to see where an app is dying. Capture the strace output to a text file. Some patience is required to browse the usually large file, but something obvious should appear, such as a missing dynamic library file.

I know a bit more now, but not much. I got the new (1.2) kaffeine package from slacky.eu and installed in place of the stock 1.1. I got a bit more info from this version when I ran from command line. Specifically after a minute or so of silence it came up with :

The other way in which I have approached the problem is to use simple command-line utilities to scan for channels. Three of these (dvbscan, scan and w_scan) all behave the same way : they produce no output, no error messages but neither do they exit. Attempts to kill with either Control-C or "kill -9 ,<pid>" also fail - the processes remain in ps lists until I reboot.

Seems like a bad error in the driver or a hardware fault in the card. The card will have to come out of the machine this week to check this out a bit more.

I'm just talking out loud here:

You wrote that the capture card worked under 13.1. Presume then that the card is still functional.

Is dbus and hald running (/etc/rc.d/rc.messagebus, rc.hald)?

Have you tested the capture card with different software such as xine or mplayer?

Does your capture card require firmware? I have two capture cards. One requires firmware (HVR-1600) and the other doesn't (HVR-1250).

For whatever reason, I seem to recall that Kaffeine is a bit cantankerous when the network is not up and running. I don't know why Kaffeine needs a network.

As there is a long pause before you see the error message, have you tried running Kaffeine through strace?

You can check the card is being detected through the logs. Look for 'DVB' or 'dvb' in dmesg and messages. If the card is being recognized by the kernel you should see a device node like /dev/dvb/adapter0. Unless you are using the huge kernel, you should see the respective modules being loaded (lsmod). For example you should see modules like cx2341x, cx23885, dvb_core, tveeprom, v4l1_compat, v4l1_common, videodev. The device modules might be different for your card, but most of the others should be loaded.

Thanks for additional hints, Woodsman. I certainly have the /dev/dvb/adapter0 device created. I have module cx88.. (can't rememberthe rest) loading and probably most of the others you mention (not at home tonight so cannot check). I will try out some of the other things you mention I need to check tomorrow. Network should be fine on that machine - main desktop PC with eth0 always on the go.

Yep, both rc.* files are executable and in the right place.

Have tried xine (crashes on startup with a segmentation fault); smplayer (runs OK but no tv played, and freezes when you ask it to play tv), vlc (runs OK but again starts to behave strangely when you ask for tv, and cannot be killed - like the cli scan programs I mentioned.

I think this might be the problem. My card is a HVR-1300. Google "linux firmware HVR-1300" and various posts can be found suggesting a variety of problems. How would I obtain and install the correct firmware? Is it likely that this was included with 13.1 drivers but has changed in a bad way in 13.37 ?

Had a quick look at this - lots and lots of output so difficult to see where the problem lies. Will try and study this a bit more.

This part seems to be OK, the /dev/dvb/adapter0 device is certainly created.

I found the following thread:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/list...v/users/391554

Looks like the HVR-1300 is looking for the v4l-cx2341x*.fw firmware. You might want to look at your dmesg logs for similar errors.

This page seems to confirm needing the firmware (CX23416).

Here is the link for the firmware:

http://linuxtv.org/downloads/firmware/

Grab the following three files:

v4l-cx23418-apu.fw
v4l-cx23418-cpu.fw
v4l-cx23418-dig.fw

As root install/copy the three files to /lib/firmware. Reboot. See what happens.

You originally wrote the TV card ran fine under Slack 13.1. Perhaps you once upon a time downloaded the firmware? Or perhaps you were using only the analog tuner and not the digital tuner?

I got the files you suggested but no improvement...

However the following output from dmseg suggests that I might need a different firmware file

I will look to see if this is available on v4l or elsewhere.

Try this link:

http://dl.ivtvdriver.org/ivtv/firmware/

Download this file:

ivtv-firmware.tar.gz

Unpack and copy the following files to /lib/firmware:

v4l-cx2341x-dec.fw
v4l-cx2341x-enc.fw
v4l-cx2341x-init.mpg

Woodsman - you've been really helpful here so it pains me to say that the firmware is still not quite sorted out - with the additions from ivtv-firmware.tar.gz which you suggested there is still a problem in dmesg:
Although in the next line after "Firmware and/or mailbox pointer not initialized or corrupted" I also see
"Firmware upload successful".

Notwithstanding, kaffeine and the cli scan utilities still behave the same way - exiting or hanging.

I guess it will have to be some strace-ing to try and figure out exactly what is going on. Actually strace-ing the dvb scanning utilities will probably yield something simpler than strace-ing kaffeine.

Thanks again for your suggestions and links.

I don't think that is a critical error.

I found the following threads indicating there is a problem with newer kernels:

http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.ph...WinTV-HVR-1300
http://bugs.launchpad.net/mythtv/+bug/439163

In the latter link, look towards the end of the comments. Seems like some people successfully patched the cx88-dvb.c source code and recompiled the kernel.

Comment #50 in that latter indicates the problem might be an acpi conflict. For a quick-and-dirty test you might try booting your system with the acpi=off boot parameter and then see whether kaffeine detects the card.

When I was learning about my own capture cards I found that searching the web for mythtv related issues helped me. Searching the web for 'mythtv hvr-1300' shows a lot of hits.

If you still have 13.1 installed on separate partitions you might want to boot to 13.1 and verify everything works. Or perhaps reinstall 13.1 on the system using the HVR-1300 if recompiling is too much work.

You might want to install the dvb-apps tools. A slackbuild script is available here. Don't worry that the package is for Slackware 12.1. Download the build script and sources and rebuild on your own system. I used the same build script to build a package on 12.2 and 13.1.

You can use those scan tools to build a channel list for xine and mplayer. Redirect the output to a text file. Use the atscscan or dvbscan command. An example:

atscscan /usr/share/dvb/scan/atsc/us-ATSC-center-frequencies-8VSB > $HOME/.xine/channels.conf

Then you could use xine to test DVB rather than kaffeine. Of course, if the problem is the kernel, the dvb-app scan tools might fail too.

Xine and mplayer use the same format in their respective channels.conf file. On my system I sym link $HOME/.mplayer/channels.conf to $HOME/.xine/channels.conf.

Booting with acpi=off does not help me as boot processes locks up when hald is being started.

I am going to follow the instructions in the mythtv link for patching the module. Seems like it is just a case of commenting out 5 lines.

I already tried dvbscan (although I got it from another source) and it fails too.

OK, some progress with re-built kernel module according to the git-and-make instructions in http://bugs.launchpad.net/mythtv/+bug/439163. Specifically I commented out the five lines suggested from cx88-dvb.c. I then did a make and a make-install, installing all the v4l modules that had been downloaded and built. Kaffeine and the various scanning utilities now no longer crash / hang. However they still do not work, they just provide more helpful error messages.

So running, dvbscan /usr/share/dvb/dvb-t/uk-Moel-y-parc simply says :

Next up, scan /usr/share/dvb/dvb-t/uk-Moel-y-parc provides more information :

Finally, running w_scan -c GB yields :

This final line of output might be the clue to what is really wrong at this stage, but I am not sure what it is that is trying to use the unsupported API - my card and its firmware ?, the driver?

Kaffeine itself now starts up and shows the DVB option as a button in its opening screen. When I open the Channels dialog however the "Source" drop-down box and "Start Scan" button are greyed out. Not surprising perhaps if there is a card-driver dialog problem.