[mythtv-users] reinitialize TV cards without rebooting?

Marc Chamberlin marc at marcchamberlin.com
Sat Oct 4 21:28:17 UTC 2008


Thanks Geoff for your suggestions...  I am not entirely sure I
understood your instructions but I will report what I have so far
done/found. Keep in mind I am NOT a linux guru so some of this was a bit
confusing to me...

Anywise I only have 3 PCI slots on my motherboard, currently occupied by
a Creative Labs sound card, a Hauppauge PVR 350 and an ATI TV-Wonder
card. So there are only so many different combinations I could try..
None of the different combinations made any difference, although SuSE
would sometimes get a bit confused and would require me to reboot it a
couple of times before it was happy again with a new configuration of
the cards.

Your suggestion to "remmod" and "insmod" the ivtv driver sounds
interesting but I need more help to accomplish that. SuSE10.3 does not
come with these particular commands and there was nothing in any man
page about them. I did a bit of research and think I should be using the
command "modprobe" instead? That seems to have something to do with
inserting and removing modules in the kernel.. Again I am not a Linux
guru so all this is guesswork...

The man page on modprobe said I could list out all the modules with the
-l optional parameter i.e.

modprobe -l

so I did the following -

modprobe -l | grep ivtv

and I got -

/lib/modules/2/6/22/18-0.2-default/updates/ivtv-fb.ko
/lib/modules/2/6/22/18-0.2-default/updates/ivtv.ko

Now not knowing/fully understanding what I am doing, and the man pages
didn't help me, I got cold feet and didn't go any further. Do I do a

modprobe -r  ???

on both of these modules? Do I just give the module name itself or the
full path name? And once removed how do I add them back in? It appears
that I want to use the command

modprobe -a ???

but if I have removed the modules will they still be in this same
directory so I can add them back? Do I use the full path name or just
the module name. Since I am not sure what I am doing with this modprobe
command to remove/add modules I don't want to be doing something that
could do damage or harm to my system. Should I back these files up
somewhere where I can find them later if something goes wrong?

Thanks again for your help, or anyone else who can get me fixed up...
Marc..





R. G. Newbury wrote:
> Marc Chamberlin wrote:
>> Hello -  I am running a Myth TV system with 2 TV cards, an Hauppauge 
>> PVR 350 and an ATI TV-Wonder. Often, when I boot up my system only 
>> one of the two cards seems to get initialized right so that Myth TV 
>> recognizes it. (Most of the time both cards are recognized) I am 
>> wondering, is there any easy way to reinitialize the card that 
>> failed, without having to reboot the system? It is rather annoying 
>> sometimes to have to wait through 1 or 2 or 3 reboot cycles in order 
>> to get the card to come back...
>>
>> Am running this on a SuSE 11.0 system.  I have tried  restarting the 
>> backend but that did not work....
>
> It *sounds* like the card needs some time to stabilize.
>
> You could try using a script (called from /etc/rc.local ) which will 
> remmod the  ivtv driver, and then insmod it back. That should trigger 
> the udev subsystem.
> (Althernatively, there is a script which re-triggers udev, which 
> should then recognize the cards.
>
> Have you tested putting these 2 cards into different slots? Or just in 
> the other slot?
> Have you tested with just one of them installed? And then the other?
> In both slots?
>
>
> There could be some sort of interrupt contention going on which a 
> slot-swop would fix, obviating any software work-arounds.
>
> Geoff
>
>
>
>
>          Please let me know if anything I say offends you.
>          I may wish to offend you again in the future.
>
>          Tux says: "Be regular. Eat cron flakes."
>





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