[mythtv-users] Problem with LIRC after upgrade to Fedora 24

[Alec Leamas]

On 19/07/16 23:42, Paul Gallaway wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 16, 2016 at 6:58 PM, Greg Woods <greg at gregandeva.net> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jul 5, 2016 at 7:07 PM, Jerry <mythtv at hambone.e4ward.com> wrote:
>>> Changing the driver from devinput to default in lirc_options.conf fixed
>>> the issue.
>> I am also having trouble getting my remote to work well after upgrading from
>> F23 to F24. It's the same damned problem I had five years ago that started a
>> long thread on this list with F14, but it's not the same fix. That one
>> turned out to be an actual kernel driver bug that got fixed. This time, most
>> likely not.
>>
> Away from my system currently so probably just adding more noise than
> anything. I am seeing a similar problem and I've been trying to
> troubleshoot (although haven't really put in the time).
>
> Not using Fedora. I'm running Debian Jessie/stable (8), using a 4.6
> kernel through jessie-backports repository with MythTV 0.27 from
> deb-multimedia repository, and my remote stopped working. I am
> currently using devinput as the LIRC driver (and have been for some
> time since running a kernel with it available as an option). I have an
> MCE-USB remote device, one of the original MS branded ones from circa
> 2008. I have a second one I've tested on my main and secondary system
> with the same issue.
>
> Anyway, since kernel 4.5+ the remote hasn't worked with my
> configuration. Finally had some time to troubleshoot over the weekend
> and dropping back to a 4.4 kernel and the remote works as expected.
> Boot the 4.6 kernel and it stops. My next step will be to submit a bug
> report to the Debian kernel team, but I'd need to boot back into the
> non-functioning kernel to complete the report.

This might be the same as the Debian bug #790969 [1]

> My other working theory (read untested and I have no evidence) is that
> kernels 4.5+ need a newer version of LIRC (0.94 was recently released
> and I think roughly maps to the release period) than is available in
> Debian Jessie repositories for devinput to function. Just a giant stab
> in the dark. Searching the Fedora project, it appears as though it is
> shipping with 0.94a which is the most recent LIRC release. It might be
> time to move to Stretch/testing version of Debian which may solve this

There is Debian packaging available in the upstream source package [2] 
which can be used to test. Although I doubt that an update will solve 
this issue, lirc-0.9.4 's mode2 can be used to debug the output from the 
devinput driver using something like 'mode2 --driver devinput --device 
auto' which might help debugging the kernel output.

One possible culprit is the /etc/lirc/lircd.conf.d/devinput.lircd.conf 
if the kernel has changed the codes somehow. lirc-0.9.4 contains a 
script lirc-make-devinput which can re-generate this file using the 
kernel headers.

An effort to update the Debian packages is under way [3]. However, the 
current maintainer is somewhat reluctant to make this update, so it's 
kind of stalled for the moment (although my sponsor has declared he 
eventually intends to push an update) .


Cheers!

--alec


[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=790969
[2] https://sourceforge.net/projects/lirc/files/LIRC/0.9.4a/
[3] https://mentors.debian.net/package/lirc