[mythtv-users] Lirc is driving me crazy

[Jarod Wilson]

On Monday, Sep 22, 2003, at 07:57 US/Pacific, Graham Siener wrote:

> I've looked through all the various threads, and it seems that some 
> people
> have gotten lirc to work with little tricks and tweaks, I however have 
> not.
>
> I've been following the ever-popular "Step-by-step guide to building a
> MythTV box under Red Hat Linux 9 w/Atrpms," and everything was working
> great.  I then started over because I decided to setup tv-out (was
> previously using just a monitor).  I'm using a Matrox G400 so I had to
> recompile stuff for framebuffer, which meant no apt-get kernel for me.
> Everything is working perfectly, except lirc.

I believe I know what your problem is... Read on.

> I can't use apt-get lirc-kmdl because I'm running a 2.4.20-20.9 kernel.

Well, actually, you're not even running 2.4.20-20.9, per se, you're 
running a custom 2.4.20-20.9, so an lirc kmdl for that kernel may or 
may not work...

> I tried apt-get remove lirc, but that also wants to remove mplayer.

It is possible, though not exactly recommended, to "rpm -e --force 
--nodeps lirc".

> So, against my better thoughts I left the apt-get install of lirc.  I 
> then
> searched for and removed the lirc_dev and lirc_i2c modules, and 
> compiled i2c
> from cvs.  All the services start, but irw doesn't respond to my remote
> (this all worked before so I'm positive it's not a hardware issue).

The big problem you're probably running into is that all the lirc rpm 
binaries are still floating around your system. Most likely, while you 
now have CVS-compiled modules, the old 0.6.6 binaries are being called, 
because they're in a higher-precedent path location (/usr/bin, 
/usr/sbin instead of /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/sbin).

> I saw the recent post about removing "inc_use" and "dec_use" from the 
> lirc
> make file.  Unfortunately that didn't work for me.

Nope, that wouldn't do any good, at least not yet, because the problem 
is multiple and incompatible binary lirc files laying about.

> I'd love to just use Axel's ATrpm with the --define kernel option, but 
> there
> is no spec file.

Uh, yes there is. Where have you been looking? If you install the 
.src.rpm file, the spec file gets installed into 
/usr/src/redhat/SPECS/, just like any other rpm, and the spec file is 
readily available on the ATrpms web site:

http://atrpms.physik.fu-berlin.de/dist/rh9/lirc/

> What should I do to get this working?

I think this may be a case where "rpm -e --force --nodeps lirc" might 
actually be a necessary evil. It should get rid of all lirc 
rpm-installed binaries, leaving you free to use the CVS-compiled stuff. 
That, or grab Axel's spec file and .src.rpm, and try rebuilding against 
your kernel. (This is probably cleaner...)

> PPS Slightly OT, how do I run a script automatically after X starts in 
> RH9?

There are quite a few ways. Some of them depend on your window manager. 
If you're following that guide, then in theory, you're running KDE, so 
you can just drop a script into ~/.kde/Autostart/

--Jarod

-- 
Jarod C. Wilson, RHCE

Got a question? Read this first...
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

MythTV, Red Hat Linux 9 & ATrpms documentation:
http://pvrhw.goldfish.org/tiki-page.php?pageName=rh9pvr250