[mythtv-users] Major chnages to ir-keytable in v4l-utils version 1.20.0?

[Tom Dexter]

On 1/24/21, Tom Dexter <digitalaudiorock at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wow did I just get burned. I've been using ir-keytable for MythTV
> flawlessly for many years under Gentoo. Today, the update of
> media-tv/v4l-utils and media-libs/libv4l from 1.16.6 to 1.20.0 broke
> everything I'm doing. They also removed the old versions, and I just
> spent all morning digging them up and putting them in my local repo to
> get 1.16.6 back and everything's working again.
>
> It appears there must have been very major changes in 1.20.0.
>
> What I've always done is to use a script that runs at boot time to
> load the keymap etc. What it does is to parse the output of the
> ir-keytable command to find the entry for the driver I'm using
> (currently iguanair), and figure out the correct /sys/class/rc/rcN
> path and the correct input dev (/dev/input/eventN), and then to do
> something like this:
>
> echo nec > /sys/class/rc/rc1/protocols
> /usr/bin/ir-keytable -D 1000 -P 900 -c -w /etc/rc_keymaps/tivo34_nec
> -d /dev/input/event2
>
> Like I say...this has worked for years. Part of what changed is the
> format of the ir-keytable output, which tripped up the parsing in my
> script. But even when I fixed that, the above ir-keytable command
> failed with this error:
>
> /usr/bin/ir-keytable -p nec -D 1000 -P 900 -c -w
> /etc/rc_keymaps/tivo34_nec -d /dev/input/event2
> Missing protocol in /etc/rc_keymaps/tivo34_nec
> ir-keytable: Failed to read table file /etc/rc_keymaps/tivo34_nec
> Try `ir-keytable --help' or `ir-keytable --usage' for more information.
>
> Apparently the keytable file needs the protocol now. Mine has never
> had anything but the scan codes, like this:
>
> cat /etc/rc_keymaps/tivo34_nec
> 0x3085c031	KEY_0
> 0x3085d028	KEY_1
> 0x3085d029	KEY_2
> 0x3085d02a	KEY_3
> 0x3085d02b	KEY_4
> ...etc...
>
> I see there's a new man page "man rc_keymap" that describes the file
> as being in toml format with the protocols and the scan codes. I'm
> just starting to understand what it appears they want there. What
> sucks is that updating to 1.20.0 again in order to screw around with
> that requires downtime for the frontend that we use a lot.
>
> Like I said, I *think* I understand for format, but if anyone else is
> familiar with this, here's what I also need to understand:
>
> If I have the "nec" format defined in that key table, does that mean
> it's no longer necessary for me to manually write it to the
> /sys/class/rc/rcN/protocols as I've been doing?
>
> Thanks!
> Tom
>

OK...I found this which seems to explain a lot:

https://forum.mythtv.org/viewtopic.php?t=3729&start=30

So that simple format I was using no longer works. From what I see
there, I *think* that I no longer need to manually write to
/sys/class/rc if the command I use specifies -s (--sysdev) set to, for
example rc1.

Will reply when/if I get that working.

Tom