[mythtv-users] reinitialize TV cards without rebooting?

R. G. Newbury newbury at mandamus.org
Mon Oct 6 17:39:40 UTC 2008


Marc Chamberlin wrote:
> 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...

Yes modprobe is the command you are looking for, When your system boots 
it loads modules. In order to test what is going on, I was suggesting 
that you remove (modprobe -r) the module for one of the cards. You may 
or may not have a modprobe.conf file, which specifically loads the 
module, but you want to ensure that it does not get loaded when you are 
testing the other card.

A simple modprobe 'module-name' will do to insert the module.

The modprobe command lines are listed in the mythtv wiki (hardware 
section iirc...the one for the PVR is here:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Opensuse_10.2#IVTV.2C_the_analogue_TV_card

That will show you how to set it up and check that it is correct.


> 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  ???

Not a bad idea to start. Then you know that neither is loaded.
Just the module name 'ivtv'

> 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 ???

modprobe ivtv is all you need.

> but if I have removed the modules will they still be in this same
> directory so I can add them back?

WHOA! You are not doing anything with the file! You are just loading the 
driver and attaching it to the kernel, so the kernel can use it to talk 
to the hardware. This is no more like putting a key in the lock. 
Everything goes bad to where it was when you re-boot.

  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?

As above, you are just loading software, not removing files.

Read the wiki page referenced above.

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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