[mythtv-users] lircd unreliable after Ubuntu upgrade 16.04 > 18.04

[Zach Cutlip]

On Wed, Mar 13, 2019 at 7:29 PM Stephen Worthington
<stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 13 Mar 2019 21:24:18 +0100, you wrote:
>
> >On 13/03/19 19:05, Allen Edwards wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Wed, Mar 13, 2019 at 10:48 AM Zach Cutlip <uid000 at gmail.com
> >> <mailto:uid000 at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >>
> >>     Hello,
> >>
> >>     After upgrading my MythTV setup from Ubuntu 16.04 (lirc 0.9.0) to
> >>     Ubuntu 18.04 (lirc 0.10.0), and jumping through various hoops to get
> >>     lircd working again, I'm finding it to be very unreliable.
> >>
> >>     Any suggestions, or things to try?
> >
> >
> >Most likely an upgrade problem. The upgrade to 0.9.0 requires manual
> >intervention [1]
> >
> >Cheers!
> >--alec
> >
> >
> >[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lirc/+bug/1791409
>
> The lirc package as installed by 18.04 is broken.  There are a number
> of problems with it, but the one that is most obvious is that
> lirc-setup does not work at all (it can not find required library .so
> files).  Your problem sounds like one of the other problems, which is
> that it sets up systemd to run lircmd, lirc-uinput and irexec as
> daemons, but does not set up valid configuration for those daemons. So
> they run in the background and one (I think it is lircd-uinput) steals
> keystrokes from the main lirc daemon.  So try running these commands
> and see if it fixes your problem:
>
> sudo systemctl stop lircmd
> sudo systemctl stop lirc-uinput
> sudo systemctl stop irexec
> sudo systemctl disable lircmd
> sudo systemctl disable lirc-uinput
> sudo systemctl disable irexec
>
> Alternatively, if you want to fix all the problems I found in 18.04's
> lirc package, you can download and run the script I wrote:
>
> http://www.jsw.gen.nz/mythtv/lirc-ubuntu-18.04-install.sh
>
> It fixes lirc-setup, the above problems and probably a few more I have
> forgotten about.  It needs to be run with sudo or as root.  I am a bit
> surprised that your lirc is working at all - the 16.04 to 18.04
> upgrade does not normally produce a working lirc setup, so you must
> have done a lot of manual configuration.

Hi Stephen,

You are right; I didn't have a working lirc setup at all after
upgrade. I had to troubleshoot quite a bit to get it working again
even to the degree that it is.

I don't think any of these are running:

 $ ps -ef | grep -E 'lircmd|lircd-uinput|irexec'
knath    12295 11492  0 14:24 pts/1    00:00:00 grep -E
lircmd|lircd-uinput|irexec
$ ps -ef | grep lirc
root     12435     1  0 14:29 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/lircd --nodaemon

I stopped & disabled the services just in case though.

Is there anything else I can check, or diagnosis I can do?

Here's my lirc_options.conf if it helps:

[lircd]
nodaemon        = False
# driver          = devinput
driver          = default
# device          = auto
device          = /dev/lirc0
output          = /var/run/lirc/lircd
pidfile         = /var/run/lirc/lircd.pid
plugindir       = /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/lirc/plugins
permission      = 666
allow-simulate  = No
repeat-max      = 600
#effective-user =
#listen         = [address:]port
#connect        = host[:port]
#loglevel       = 6
#release        = true
#release_suffix = _EVUP
#logfile        = ...
#driver-options = ...

[lircmd]
uinput          = False
nodaemon        = False

# [modinit]
# code = /usr/sbin/modprobe lirc_serial
# code1 = /usr/bin/setfacl -m g:lirc:rw /dev/uinput
# code2 = ...


# [lircd-uinput]
# add-release-events = False
# release-timeout    = 200
# release-suffix     = _EVUP

And here's the start to my lircd remote definition, which has always
worked perfectly until now:

begin remote

  name  Tivo_S2
  bits           32
  flags SPACE_ENC|CONST_LENGTH
  eps            20
  aeps          200

  header       9000  4500
  one           562  1687
  zero          562   562
  ptrail        562
  repeat       9000  2250
  gap          108000
  min_repeat      1
  toggle_bit      0

  frequency    38000

      begin codes
          TIVO                     0x00000000A10CE00F
          TV_POWER                 0x00000000A10C0807
          TV_INPUT                 0x00000000A10C2C03
          WINDOW                   0x00000000A10C220D
          LIVE_TV                  0x00000000A10C8807
          INFO                     0x00000000A10CC807
          GUIDE                    0x00000000A10C6C03
          UP                       0x00000000A10C2807
          LEFT                     0x00000000A10CE807
          RIGHT                    0x00000000A10CA807
          DOWN                     0x00000000A10C6807






-- 
:wq!