mythbuntu-bugs team mailing list archive

[Jarod Wilson <jarod@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jun 7, 2011, at 12:31 AM, Dan Christian wrote:

> Ya, but that's not something an ordinary user knows how to figure out.
> I couldn't find any docs on how to setup devinput, what it is, or
> when to use it.

http://lirc.org/html/devinput.html


> It's not at all clear from the documentation how to find and debug
> each of these steps:
> Which driver (the docs say the atilibusb driver is right, not
> ati_remote;

What docs are you referring to here?


> but everything has changed in recent kernels).
> What device (I didn't know which directory to look in the device tree,
> which device file to pick, or why).

See prior link.


> What configuration lircd needs for that (hardware.conf setup isn't
> actually documented).

hardware.conf is a Debian creation that Ubuntu inherited from there.
Upstream lirc has nothing to do with it, so I can't help there.


> What lircd.conf is needed for the above steps (and why).

The question of which lircd.conf is covered at that link. The why
is because all devinput devices have keys mapped to the standard
linux input layer key namespace, as defined in include/linux/input.h,
so its impossible for a key to have any other value than the ones
that are defined in that config.


> What .lirc/mythtv file (actually, once irw works, this step isn't so hard).
> 
> To make it even worse, what are the ir_* drivers that seems to get
> loaded automatically?  I couldn't find any info on them.

'modinfo <drivername>' is usually a start. You could also ask about
them on the lirc or linux-media mailing lists.

They're in-kernel decoders for raw IR hardware, used to map raw IR
scancodes to linux input layer key namespace.


> Are they stepping on the user's configuration?

In this case, no, not at all. The firefly is RF. The IR decoders only
have something to do if your receiver passes along raw IR samples.


> The mythbuntu control panel is supposed to make this easy, but it was
> crashing on me, and it's configuration was broken in 10.10 and 11.04.

Well, the mythbuntu control panel is another piece of software that is
completely and totally out of upstream lirc's control. I've never even
seen it, let alone tried to use it. If its broken, well, that's on the
people who maintain it. A fair amount has changed in the IR world lately,
and its all been discussed 100% in the open on the lirc and linux-media
mailing lists. (Nb: if it wasn't already understood, I don't actually
use Ubuntu myself).


> The software stack may work, but user's can't figure it out.  I don't
> want to belittle much hard work, but things don't look good from a
> user perspective.

Honestly, I have to blame hardware.conf's auto-population thing that
the lirc deb runs and/or the mythbuntu control center for most of this.
Its actually *very* simple to set these things up by hand. It seems
like the tooling is just out of date with reality.


> Thanks you for all your effort.  I hope this view from a user's
> perspective is constructive (but it feels like I'm whining about
> something I got for free :-).

Yes and no. I do know that a central documentation repository kept up
to date with the latest and greatest information for how to configure
every remote under the sun would be helpful. I just don't have the
time to create such a thing. I do answer quite a bit of email on the
aforementioned mailing lists though. The mythbuntu control center and
hardware.conf issues are well out of my control though.


-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod@xxxxxxxxxxxx

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Mythbuntu
Bug Team, which is subscribed to lirc in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/787735

Title:
  Snapstream Firefly non-functional

Status in “lirc” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: lirc

  Using the mythbuntu control center configuration for a Snapstream
  Firefly and atilibusb, no key presses show up under mythtv or irw.

  I couldn't get the userspace driver to work in 10.10 either (but
  didn't file a bug - bad user).  In 10.10, I got it working using the
  lirc_atiusb module, but that also doesn't work under 11.04.

  I've attached the hardware.conf below.  The lircd.conf just includes
  /usr/share/lirc/remotes/atiusb/lircd.conf.atilibusb

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
  Package: lirc 0.8.7-0ubuntu4.1
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
  Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Tue May 24 12:39:59 2011
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_US:en
   PATH=(custom, user)
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: lirc
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-05-22 (1 days ago)