Re: ngene & Satix-S2 dual problems

[Robert Longbottom <rongblor@googlemail.com>]

On 21/11/2010 13:15, Andre wrote:
>
> On 21 Nov 2010, at 13:07, Robert Longbottom wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 21 Nov 2010, at 11:40 AM, Andre<linux-media@dinkum.org.uk>  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 20 Nov 2010, at 19:22, Oliver Endriss wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> On Saturday 20 November 2010 16:52:34 Robert Longbottom wrote:
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>> I have a Satix-S2 Dual that I'm trying to get to work properly so that I
>>>>> can use it under MythTv however I'm running into a few issues.  I
>>>>> previously posted about the problems I'm having here to the mythtv
>>>>> list[1], but didn't really get anywhere.  I've had chance to have a bit
>>>>> more of a play and I now seem to have a definite repeatable problem.
>>>>>
>>>>> The problem is when a recording stops on one of the inputs, after about
>>>>> 40s it causes the other input to loose it's signal lock and stop the
>>>>> recording as well.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Steps to demonstrate the problem (My Satix card is adapters 5 and 6)
>>>>>
>>>>> In 3 seperate terminals set up femon/szap/cat to make a recording from
>>>>> one of the inputs:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1 - femon -a 6 -f 0 -H
>>>>> 2 - szap -a 6 -f 0 -d 0 -r -H -p -c scanResult07Oct2010_Satix -l
>>>>> UNIVERSAL "BBC 1 London"
>>>>> 3 - cat /dev/dvb/adapter6/dvr0>  ad6.mpg
>>>>>
>>>>> In 2 seperate terminals tune in the other input:
>>>>>
>>>>> 4 - femon -a 5 -f 0 -H
>>>>> 5 - szap -a 5 -f 0 -d 0 -r -H -p -c scanResult07Oct2010_Satix -l
>>>>> UNIVERSAL "ITV1 London"
>>>>>
>>>>> Both inputs are fine, signal is good, recording from adapter 6 works.
>>>>>
>>>>> 6 - Ctrl-C the szap process created in (5).
>>>>>
>>>>> femon in (4) still reports status=SCVYL and decent signal strengh as if
>>>>> the adapter is still tuned and FE_HAS_LOCK.  After approximately 40
>>>>> seconds, either:
>>>>>
>>>>> a) the signal drops significantly but the status remains at SCVYL and
>>>>> FE_HAS_LOCK
>>>>>
>>>>> or
>>>>>
>>>>> b) the signal drops and the status goes blank with no lock.
>>>>>
>>>>> It doesn't seem to matter which of these two happen, but at the same
>>>>> time the recording on the other tuner looses it signal and stops
>>>>> recording, despite the fact that szap is still running in (2).  femon in
>>>>> (1) no longer reports FE_HAS_LOCK.
>>>>>
>>>>> Strangely if I then try to restart the szap process created in terminal
>>>>> 2 (to try and retune it) it just waits after printing out "using
>>>>> '/dev/dvb/....".  However if I then restart the szap process in terminal
>>>>> 5, the one in terminal 2 suddenly kicks in and gets a lock.
>>>>>
>>>>> Interestingly I found a link describing a 60s period the card is kept
>>>>> open for [2], which seems to be similar to my ~40s delay.  So it looks
>>>>> like when the second input on the card is closed the first input looses
>>>>> it's lock.
>>>>>
>>>>> This obviously makes it pretty useless for MythTv and as a result it's
>>>>> not currently being used, which is a shame!
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm using the ngene driver from the stock 2.6.35.4 kernel on Gentoo.
>>>>>
>>>>> Does anyone else see this problem?  Is there anything I can do to try
>>>>> and fix / debug it?  Are there any bug fixes in the latest kernel that
>>>>> might help, or in the linux-dvb drivers that would help?
>>>>>
>>>>> Any help or advice much appreciated.
>>>>
>>>> Please try this driver:
>>>> http://linuxtv.org/hg/~endriss/ngene-test2
>>>
>>> Well that's progress, trying Robert's procedure fails with my stock driver (Ubuntu 10.10's 2.6.35-22-generic) but recording continues with your ngene-test2 driver :-)
>>>
>>> NB I needed to go grab ngene_18.fw before it would work and I have three unexpected extra frontends, adapter 0,1&2 as well as the configured 5&6, not sure what's going on there yet!
>>>
>>> There's a ber bump on the other tuner when you retune but it carries on which is the main thing at this stage. Can see glitches at the corresponding spot in the recording but worth a try with Myth perhaps?
>>>
>>> I've been running with only one of the tuners for months, perhaps best to switch off active eit collection though looking at that ber bump.
>>>
>>> Great stuff Oliver.
>>>
>>> Andre
>>>
>>>
>>
>> That does sound like good news, I'll try and give it a go later today now that I have a process to test with. If it does appear to have fixed it then I'll switch myth over to using it later next week and see how it gets on.
>
> I tried it with Myth 0.24 and just got six simultaneous HD recordings out of it :-)) total seven if you count the one I started to keep the HD-S2 card busy, can't try any more with that sat and my sub.
>
> No glitches I can see, tried it a couple of times with different muxes, so far so good.
>>
>> Will report back with the results later.
>
> You can have your thread back now ;-)

Thanks ;-)  The more people that test this and iron out the bugs the 
better :-)

I've run through my procedure again using the ngene-test2 drivers from 
Oliver and I can report success as well.  I too see a glitch on the 2nd 
tuner when you retune the 1st, or after about 30s from killing an szap 
against the 1st, but the stream on the second tuner continues, so thats 
a massive improvement.  Good work.

I'll give it a quick go with MythTV as well tonight, and later next 
week.  Previously when I tried this tuner with MythTV it would record 
upto 6 streams with no problem, but of couse when one tuner dropped out 
of use the streams using the other tuner would stop recording (but I 
didn't know why at the time).  I just need to set up a cunning array of 
recordings to test that through MythTV, but it looks pretty promising so 
far.

Oh, I also get the three extra dvb adapters, in my case 1,2 & 3.  (I 
already have two other dvb cards in this box that take 0 and 4)  Thats 
using these module parameters:

robert@quad /sys/module/ngene/parameters $ grep -iH . *
adapter_nr:5,6,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1
debug:0
one_adapter:0
shutdown_workaround:0



If I use the default parameters:
robert@quad /sys/module/ngene/parameters $ grep -iH . *
adapter_nr:-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1
debug:0
one_adapter:1
shutdown_workaround:0

I only get one dvb adapter (/dev/dvb/adapter1), but it contains too much 
stuff (extra demuxes, dvrs & nets):

robert@quad /dev/dvb $ ls -l adapter1
total 0
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212,  0 Nov 21 17:09 demux0
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212,  7 Nov 21 17:09 demux1
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 11 Nov 21 17:09 demux2
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 14 Nov 21 17:09 demux3
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 17 Nov 21 17:09 demux4
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212,  1 Nov 21 17:09 dvr0
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212,  8 Nov 21 17:09 dvr1
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 12 Nov 21 17:09 dvr2
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 15 Nov 21 17:09 dvr3
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 18 Nov 21 17:09 dvr4
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212,  6 Nov 21 17:09 frontend0
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 10 Nov 21 17:09 frontend1
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212,  2 Nov 21 17:09 net0
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212,  9 Nov 21 17:09 net1
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 13 Nov 21 17:09 net2
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 16 Nov 21 17:09 net3
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 19 Nov 21 17:09 net4

dmesg reports the following when you do 'modprobe ngene' if that helps 
at all:

[ 4504.852993] nGene PCIE bridge driver, Copyright (C) 2005-2007 Micronas
[ 4504.853039] ngene 0000:02:00.0: PCI INT A -> Link[APC5] -> GSI 16 
(level, low) -> IRQ 16
[ 4504.853048] ngene: Found Mystique SaTiX-S2 Dual (v2)
[ 4504.855133] ngene 0000:02:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[ 4504.855667] ngene: Device version 1
[ 4504.857551] ngene: Loading firmware file ngene_18.fw.
[ 4504.876640] ngene 0000:02:00.0: irq 41 for MSI/MSI-X
[ 4504.878124] error in i2c_read_reg
[ 4504.878127] No CXD2099 detected at 40
[ 4504.878285] DVB: registering new adapter (nGene)
[ 4505.159774] LNBx2x attached on addr=a
[ 4505.159859] stv6110x_attach: Attaching STV6110x
[ 4505.159864] DVB: registering adapter 1 frontend 0 (STV090x 
Multistandard)...
[ 4505.165626] LNBx2x attached on addr=8
[ 4505.165894] stv6110x_attach: Attaching STV6110x
[ 4505.165901] DVB: registering adapter 1 frontend 0 (STV090x 
Multistandard)...

Thanks,
Robert.