[mythtv-users] Has FireWire behavior changed in 0.20? (Or, 24 hours of agony)

[Allan Wilson]

On 9/13/06, Yeechang Lee <ylee at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> I've posted several messages on my experiences with FireWire recording
> over the past nine months. After several months of usually good
> results punctuated by minutes or hours of sheer frustration, for the
> past several months I'd eventually gotten my daisy-chained dual
> Motorola 6200 cable-box setup down to a science (or as close as
> Linux's FireWire libraries and 0.19-fixes would allow):
>
> * Tell mythtv-setup to look for my two cable boxes at port 0, node 1
>   and port 0, node 3, respectively, using point-to-point and 200mbps
>
> * Run the following script in /etc/rc.d/rc.local.
>
>     #!/bin/sh
>     plugctl -n 1 oPCR[0].n_p2p_connections=0
>     plugctl -n 1 oPCR[0].bcast_connection=0
>     plugctl -n 1 oPCR[0].data_rate=2
>     plugctl -n 1 oPCR[0].channel=0
>     plugctl -n 1 oPCR[0].n_p2p_connections=1
>
>     plugctl -n 3 oPCR[0].n_p2p_connections=0
>     plugctl -n 3 oPCR[0].bcast_connection=0
>     plugctl -n 3 oPCR[0].data_rate=2
>     plugctl -n 3 oPCR[0].channel=1
>     plugctl -n 3 oPCR[0].n_p2p_connections=1
>
> (Substituting, of course, the correct nodes as revealed by plugreport
> after -n.)
>
> * Quite often, mythbackend would, after rebooting the backend
>   computer. straightaway be able to record simultaneously from both
>   boxes. If it didn't. "priming the pump" by running the above script
>   manually a few times (perhaps once or twice without any recordings
>   going on and, if necessary, once or twice right after entering Live
>   TV) would *always* do the trick. My setup was so stable that I would
>   almost always only have to reboot the backend PC voluntarily,
>   anyway.
>
> 0.20 appears to have changed the rules of the game. Since upgrading,
> over the past 24 hours I have tried every possible combination of
> FireWire configurations in mythtv-setup and variants of the above
> script, with no luck whatsoever. And believe me, I know them all, from
> back in the bad old days. (However, note that even back then it would
> *never* take me this long to get things running again!) Here's what
> happens:
>
> * When I enter Live TV, it may or may not start. If it doesn't, I get
>   the infamous "No Input in 15 seconds" message. More precisely, I see
>   the following:
>
> 2006-09-13 00:30:38.045 FireRec: Buffered packets 8000 (32000 KB)
> 2006-09-13 00:30:45.065 TVRec(1): Changing from WatchingLiveTV to None
> 2006-09-13 00:30:53.151 FireRec: No Input in 15 seconds [P:0 N:1] (select)
>
> (The first two log lines are new in 0.20. Yes, it does seem like the
> system gives up a full eight seconds before it's supposed to. That may
> or may not be relevant.)
>
> * If LiveTV works, switching to the other cable box may or may not
>   produce the same dreaded "No Input" error.
> * If switching to the other cable box works, jumping back to the first
>   cable box may or may not produce the same "No Input" error.
> * If I can consistently and properly swtich between both cable boxes,
>   trying to record from both at the same time (whether it be by
>   actually recording from one and running Live TV on the other, or
>   actually recording from both) always fails. End of story.
>
> Here are some other clues:
>
> * I can pretty consistently get just one box to work by removing the
>   other one's entry from mythtv-setup. Not ideal, but that's what I've
>   resorted to for now.
> * Remember how I said that priming the pump with the above script
>   would always get things rolling in short order? Well, one of the
>   ways I can tell things were working fine was by plugreport telling
>   me that n_p2p_connections=1 for both nodes and these results staying
>   as such no matter what. With 0.20, even when LiveTV or recording is
>   working on one or both boxes, I see while the recording is occuring
>   that n_p2p_connections=1 more than whatever number I've assigned it
>   with my script. That is, if in the script I assign n_p2p_connections
>   on node 1 the value of 3, it will start out at 3, go up to 4 while a
>   recording is occurring, then come back down to 4 once the recording
>   ends. (The only exception is if I assign with the scrip the value of
>   0; this does not change. The boxes still don't work, though.) Again,
>   I'm positive 0.19-fixes did not do this.
>
> I've read the 0.20 releae notes but don't anything that seems
> espeially relevant to my situation. Can a developer verify whether the
> FireWire code in 0.20 has been changed in some subtler, undocumented
> way that might be resulting in this new behavior?
>
> --
> Yeechang Lee <ylee at pobox.com> | +1 650 776 7763 | San Francisco CA US
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>

I also have two firewire cable boxes (SA3250HD) and all of the sudden I am
also having strange problems after it worked great for months. I don't know
if my problem is related to yours but I am also poking around trying to
figure out what is going on. I want my HD back :(

Allan
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