[mythtv-users] Problems with FireWire recording

Bruce Markey bjm at lvcm.com
Sun Mar 16 19:34:37 UTC 2008


Jason wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm using a 0.21 setup with a dedicated backend that has a DCH-3200
> attached via firewire.  The firewire drivers are those included with
> 2.6.18-53.1.13.el5 on my Centos-5.1 system.  Modinfo for raw1394
--^^^^^^^^^
> doesn't report a version other than the kernel version.  This is all
> on a x86_64 system.
>
> Occasionally, my firewire connection to the DCH-3200 goes nuts and
> needs to be reset.  I'm OK with that,

You shouldn't be.

This was due to a virtual memory bug in the kernel. The 1394 libs
would report an error until reset even though the connection to
the device was really okay. A reset didn't assure that it wouldn't
happen again minutes or seconds later.

This was fixed in 2.6.23.6 or later. There may also be a workaround
in new versions of the 1394 libs but if you use 2.6.24.x, it works
fine.  

>  I guess, as doesn't seem to be
> an uncommon problem and searching on the Gossamer archives seems to
> indicate it might be a problem with the Linux firewire driver.

There were tons of scripts and procedures to try to deal with
the problem. Here's one that would work as well as any other:
Get up and go to the next room, scratch your ass, come back and
sit down, use firewire_tester with -R then try again and hope
it doesn't fail.

A much more effective procedure is to upgrade your kernel.

--  bjm





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