Driver for latest kernel in Ubuntu - Repository?

[Faehliks]

Hi @ all,

my Q-Box S2 works fine, even for HD TV, but every once in a while, when a new kernel version is installed automatically, the drivers won't work anymore.
To me the only solution seems to boot an older kernel.
Reinstalling the latest driver (linux-tbs-all_20101024.rar) from your web page doesn't solve it, at least for the 2.6.32-28 kernel (but doesn't show any error messages as well). But after reboot, there's no frontend file.

Probably everybody here's having the same issue?! Seems to be a general problem that for every new kernel version, the TBS driver has to be (re)installed manually.
Is there any way to automatically update the TBS driver to adapt to kernel updates?
Could you maybe provide an Ubuntu repository (PPA) so the driver can be updated through APT?

Greetings

[cody]

hi, the Linux drivers are kernel modules, that's why they installed in particular running kernel, as far as kernel is upgraded it's necessary to re-build the driver in that kernel and re-install the driver. in case of Q-box S2 the driver is fully open-source and it could be submitted to the Linux kernel, but the process is painfully slow - last time we did such thing for TBS 6920:

https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/42777/

it took so much time for Linux V4L maintainers to review, approve and submit the patch to the Linux kernel, that made the process more or less pointless for us and since then we started maintaining our own driver packages and we have no plans to change that.

[Faehliks]

Hi cody,
thank you for your quick reply and the explanations - I wasn't aware that the patch would have to go all the way to the v4l development team and would have to be included directly in the kernel...
When I noticed that my system's kernel had been updated and that the DVB driver wasn't loaded anymore, I tried to reinstall the driver/kernel module through

sudo make && make install - no change.

So would I have to do

make clean
and
make distclean

before to *force* a rebuild for the new kernel?!

Is there any way to have the system automatically recompile/rebuild the module after a kernel update? I read something about DKMS, which sounded quite promising, could it do the job?

[cody]

hi, personally i'm not familiar with DKMS. you can look at this thread for some details about common mistake when update the kernel:

https://shop.tbsdtv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=222

you should rebuild the driver using another directory and the "clean" driver package, because some settings are stored during the build process, which are not removed by "make clean".

[steffenb]

Hi there,

i just got a request from one of our users to include the TBS drivers into our repository/distribution (yavdr). That means i could possibly create a dkms package for the driver, but i would like to clarify a few things before.

As i dont see a general forum, and this thread matches my questions somewhat:

If i see it correct, there are 2 different driver packages (8921 and all). Further the "all" package contains only open source driver ? Some of the drivers are closed source ? Is it really required to be closed source or just "for your convenience" with pre-compiled binary ? What is really required to compile the drivers ? (i see no point in maintaining just another package, if it could be included in another existing one).

If you want, we can also discuss this offline. Just let me know.

[cody]

hi, correct, the "all" package contains only open source drivers. the other packages are 99% open-source, but the rest of them contains some binary modules, that are not-open-sourced not just for our convenient and you can find some more answers about why here:

https://shop.tbsdtv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=110#p562

however, the not-open-sourced part is not kernel or distribution dependent and it can work with almost all kernel versions and distributions and it's distributed under the same as under which proprietary binary firmwares are distributed with Linux kernels and you can read it here:

http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Firmware_model1

so, if it's OK your distribution to be "contaminated" with such binary modules then it's possible such packages to prepared for all of the TBS hardware. in fact it's very easy to take only the necessary portions of our Linux driver packages and patch every kernel source tree to add support for the TBS hardware - that's what out IPTV, embedded systems customers do.

regards,
cody

[steffenb]

Thanks. Well yavdr is kind of pragmatic in that respect. We build it mainly around nvidia driver (as long as its the only chance to handle HDTV properly right now) We deliver Sundtek drivers, so why not also those. In the end it should be the user who decides, not we trying to teach someone something. I will check how to integrate it easiest then. i would like to omit another dkms package, so i want to integrate it either with the linuxtv package or the s2-liplianin one. Will come back later if any question remains.

[cody]

@steffenb

thanks, i think it will make "yavdr" more friendly for TBS hardware owners and please, if you have any questions or troubles let me know - in fact if you send me the source code of the package(s) you want to patch with TBS support, i can do it, when my time permits and give it back to you. it's very easy and that will give you idea how to maintain the package for the future.

[Faehliks]

Hi,
any news on that? I guess everyone using the Q-Box along with Linux - including me - would greatly appreciate a dkms package.
And I'm gonna have a look at yaVDR now. I'm still looking for a nice viewing/recording solution.
Felix

[beny1961]

Hi,
After installing the latest linux drivers on Ubuntu 10.10 with kernel 2.6.32-28 the computer is freezing. Please help to avoid this issue. I didn't receive any error massages but after reboot a can't move my mouse.
Any suggestion would be great appreciated. Thanks in advanced.