[mythtv-users] Why does the backend sometimes get my Firewire port wrong?

[JS Boyd]

I've seen both of these issues with Motorola Cable boxes and Firewire. I 
reduced the problem significantly by swapping one cablebox for another.

You may find that you need to prime your firewire setup. There are many 
notes on this at:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Firewire_Priming

While my newer cablebox provides more reliable recordings (the previous 
one would randomly stop sending to the Mythbox) the new cablebox can get 
to such a state that it will crash the Mythbox with what appears to be 
all kinds of bogus data according to the logs.

LFireDev() notations are what happens when Myth first starts up and 
can't see the Firewire. It tries to reset the firewire bus. In your 
case, it appears to eventually re-obtain video signal. It many cases it 
may not and will just loop over and over reseting the firewire and and 
not finding any input for 1050 seconds and then looping again. To get 
out of that you need to restart the mythbackend process.

I've also found that rmmod'ing the ochi1394 kernel module and then 
modprobing it back can bring Firewire back for a while, but eventually 
even that will not work and you'll have to reboot the Myth box.

I have to say that the new cablebox worked fantastically for the first 
few days BEFORE the Comcast remotely reprogrammed it. For a while, we 
were getting premium channels not in our plan, but Firewire worked 
perfectly. Once the cablebox was updated with our actual allowed 
channels  Firewire became less stable.  Not as bad as the first box, but 
less stable. I suspect something a bit toxic to Firewire is in one of 
Comcasts cablebox upgrades.

Everything except Firewire works perfectly on my Myth setup.

S.

Phil Bridges wrote:
> Sometimes when I'm watching LiveTV on a remote frontend through my
> cable box's Firewire port (please no griping about LiveTV - this is
> the only way to watch my non-ClearQAM channels in my bedroom), I'll
> change the channel, and no video will display - I'll just get the
> "There is an error displaying video" screen (or words to that effect).
>  When I look at my backend logs, I get this message:
>
> 2008-11-02 05:29:18.511 TVRec(7): ASK_RECORDING 7 0 0 0
> 2008-11-02 05:29:18.599 TVRec(7): Changing from None to RecordingOnly
> 2008-11-02 05:29:18.600 TVRec(7): HW Tuner: 7->7
> 2008-11-02 05:29:18.600 LAVCInfo(), Error: Unable to get handle for port: -1
>                         eno: Invalid argument (22)
> 2008-11-02 05:29:18.603 TVRec(7) Error: Failed to set channel to 876.
> Reverting to kState_None
> 2008-11-02 05:29:18.603 TVRec(7): Changing from RecordingOnly to None
>
> It appears that restarting the backend is the only way to reset what
> Firewire port is being used - when I restart the backend and use the
> Firewire input again, I get:
>
> 2008-11-02 05:32:30.205 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB), Warning: No Input
> in 1050 msec...
> 2008-11-02 05:32:30.206 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB): ResetBus() -- begin
> 2008-11-02 05:32:30.208 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB): ResetBus() -- end
> 2008-11-02 05:32:30.209 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB): SignalReset(126->127)
> 2008-11-02 05:32:30.209 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB):
> SignalReset(126->127): Updating device list -- begin
> 2008-11-02 05:32:30.530 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB):
> SignalReset(126->127): Updating device list -- end
> libiec61883 warning: iec61883_cmp_create_bcast_output: Failed to set
> the oPCR[0] plug for node 63.
> 2008-11-02 05:32:30.646 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB), Error: Bus Reset :
> Failed to reconnect
> 2008-11-02 05:32:31.009 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB), Warning: No Input
> in 50 msec...
> [snip]
> 2008-11-02 05:32:32.049 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB), Warning: No Input
> in 1050 msec...
> 2008-11-02 05:32:32.050 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB): ResetBus() -- begin
> 2008-11-02 05:32:32.053 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB): ResetBus() -- end
> 2008-11-02 05:32:32.054 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB): SignalReset(127->128)
> 2008-11-02 05:32:32.054 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB):
> SignalReset(127->128): Updating device list -- begin
> 2008-11-02 05:32:32.062 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB):
> SignalReset(127->128): Updating device list -- end
> 2008-11-02 05:32:32.113 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB), Warning: No Input
> in 50 msec...
> 2008-11-02 05:32:32.165 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB), Warning: No Input
> in 100 msec...
> 2008-11-02 05:32:32.401 LFireDev(001BDDFFFEF17BEB): Buffered packets
> 2000 (8000 KB)
>
> How does the backend know which port to look at all of a sudden?  Is
> there anyway I can reset the port automatically when it starts looking
> at port -1?
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-- 
==
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