Hi everyone,

So I have tried many times the last 6 months or more to get my card to work under Linux. Everytime I have had to go back to Windows So today I made a new try and I would really appriciate if someone could help me get this working.

I have a FireDTV T/CI box that I use with a Conax CI, I also have a HD-PVR attached wich is shown as video0. The software is Ubuntu server 9.10 (2.6.31-14-generic-pae). To view I want to use http://www.sagetv.com/ that is installed. In SageTV the card gets recognized as adapter0 but when I try to scan for channels I get none.

Looking at some logs I found this



So possibly my problem is that the CI module is not enabled and therefor I cannot get any channels?

I would appriciate if someone could advice me on the next step.
I have seen the patches from http://firedtv.kurelid.se/ but I am not sure if I need to apply any or even how to do it.

This time I do not wish to fail yet another time;-)

Thank you!

/
Jonathan Hjertström
jh@nixi.com

I just got 2 second hand firedtv with cam, and I try to get them going
with mythtv under mythbuntu 9.10

I (will) use Boxer (Sweden) and I get this when I connect them after each other

Jan 23 21:57:38 ibm kernel: [346111.989945] input: FireDTV remote control as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0a.3/fw-host0/input/input5
Jan 23 21:57:38 ibm kernel: [346112.865301] DVB: registering new adapter (FireDTV T/CI)
Jan 23 21:57:38 ibm kernel: [346112.865786] DVB: registering adapter 1 frontend 0 (FireDTV T/CI)...
Jan 23 22:23:36 ibm kernel: [347670.558082] input: FireDTV remote control as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0a.3/fw-host0/input/input6
Jan 23 22:23:36 ibm kernel: [347670.617823] DVB: registering new adapter (FireDTV T/CI)
Jan 23 22:23:36 ibm kernel: [347670.618377] DVB: registering adapter 2 frontend 0 (FireDTV T/CI)...
Jan 23 22:23:36 ibm kernel: [347670.629592] firedtv 0012870035000bac-0: Conditional Access Module not enabled

And yes, I spent 25 minutes configuring myth, and making coffee between I connected them.
The second one gets the CAM not enabled, but not the first one.
I'm off later this week to actually buy a boxer card, but timeplan is sketchy, we are moving...
Both cards works good with the free channels.
They are NOT connected to external power.
I wonder if that is the problem, that the firewirebus cannot drive 2 cards, with cams...

Anyway, I just wanted you to know that soon, you'll have someone else trying to get it to work as well.
I have kernel 2.6.31-17-generic

/Björn

So, I'm happy to say that with a new kernel, 2.6.32.5-candela,
and kurelid's 2 last patches, I got 1 card working well in mythtv, with Boxer and encrypted channels. but not mpg4 channels
And I cannot get it to work if I use both cards. then myth will hang when I access the cards.
The firedtv is fed a smartwi card, so that works.

I upgraded firmware from 1.2.? to 1.4.? via a windows box

Anyone have two cards working?
Both cards works.

Kernel compiled with kernelcheck, found at
http://launchpadlibrarian.net/35212126/ ... -3_all.deb

easy way to compile a kernel, but the sf version is bad.
This is found at https://bugs.launchpad.net/kernelcheck/+bug/432732
post #31
/Björn

I have two FireDTVs, a C/CI and a T/CI. I can use them both at once without problem. (I only use VLC, sometimes kaffeine, on current Gentoo Linux. I don't have a CAM.)



I doubt that there is a bus power problem. If you are using a PCI or PCIe card, check whether it has an extra internal power connector (floppy or harddisk formfactor) and if so, make sure that it is connected to the PSU.

The message "Conditional Access Module not enabled" is logged when no CAM is present in the CI or when the driver is unable to communicate with the CI for some reason --- which should of course never happen.

I am not familiar with the driver code that is involved with CAM usage. However, there were CAM related fixes going into Linux kernel 2.6.32, so you may want to look for a 2.6.32 based kernel package.



Oh, there are two more patches at this site which are not yet in 2.6.32 nor .33. I am going to ask Henrik what's up with them.

Hmm! i'm up to 2.6.32-9 now, and I have problems with card lock-ups.

If I only watch free channels, then all is ok. I can switch channels as I like.
But if I use encrypted channels, I can switch channel one or two times,
but then I get a behaviour that looks like the encrypted channels are no go, but the free channels are still ok.
The only way to fix it is via reboot.
I run the card from mythtc 0.22-fixes

Works perfectly on my intel mac-book. (Elgato)

By the way, has anyone experience with running mythtv backend on mac (ppc), with firedtv? I see that as an option, if i cannot solve the lock-ups.

/Björn

As long as there isn't a real fix, you could try unloading and reloading the ohci1394 driver or the firedtv driver, or unplugging and replugging the FireDTV as possibly quicker workarounds than a reboot.

Thanks for the module tip. I'll try that.
Unplugging/replugging the fireDTV is a no go. Tried it, does not work.
Sometimes I get an OOPS doing that, sometimes nothing happens.

Thinking of it, when I compile a kernel, I have the choice of using the new or the old firewire stack. I compile both, but is any prefered over the other?
(2.6.32-9)
Is there any logs I should catch, and if I peek into the code myself, is there a good starting point? I'd guess where the CA handling is coded, but where is that...


/Björn

I make a mental note to try hot-unplug myself; that oops deserves to be fixed. (At least in the new stack, if it happens with old and new stack alike.)


There is no real preference if FireDTV or FloppyDTV is the only FireWire hardware that you are using. In that case there is no difference regarding features. There seemed to be a tiny decrease in CPU utilization with the new stack, but I haven't taken proper measurements yet to be sure.

However, for FireDTV/FloppyDTV users the new drivers are only an alternative since kernel 2.6.33, because 2.6.33(-rc1) is the first mainline kernel which contains the firedtv driver updates that allow firedtv to run on top of the new firewire-core + firewire-ohci, alternatively to the old ieee1394 + ohci1394. In stock 2.6.32, firedtv only works with the latter two.

On the CA issues:

The firedtv module has a "debug" parameter which lets you enable verbose logging into the kernel log (dmesg output, typically received by syslogd and written into /var/log/messages). Since kernel 2.6.32, this parameter accepts several numeric flags to choose which kinds of traffic should be logged. Show a short help on it:

Switch on debug logging while loading the driver, here with flags that enable HOST2CA and CA2HOST transactions logging with transaction payloads:

The same but after the fact, when firedtv was already loaded:

To switch verbose logging off again when no longer needed:

So this is how you can collect some data on what is going on during live usage. But I can't tell you what to actually do with that data as I am not familiar with any of this. You could try to get in touch with the one guy who submitted all of the CA related updates during the past year, Henrik Kurelid (via mail, and ideally Cc the linux-media mailinglist also; you don't need to subscribe there).

• CA related interface between DVB core and firedtv:
  all of firedtv-ci.c
• encapsulation of CA messages into FireWire transactions:
  avc_ca_* functions in firedtv-avc.c