[mythtv-users] TBS 6904SE linux drivers freeze my Ubuntu 22.04 box

[Stephen Worthington]

On Mon, 19 Sep 2022 06:28:07 +0100, you wrote:

>This actually fails before even getting to myth so it's arguably off topic.
>But if anyone has recent TBS hardware and a clue, it would be most welcome.
>
>New quad-tuner capture card: TBS 6904 SE
>New (recycled) box based on Intel DQ87PG motherboard
>Fresh install of Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS
>
>So far so good. lspci sees the card.
>
>Installation of linux drivers from the TBS website:
>https://www.tbsiptv.com/download/common/tbs-open-linux-drivers_v20220424.zip
>The make process proceeds to the end without any obvious errors. So does
>the installation. It asks for a reboot and then...
>
>Grub shows its menu OK
>
>after that the screen goes black and nothing ever happens. It never even
>gets into graphical mode.
>
>I have even wiped the disk, installed Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS instead, installed
>the TBS drivers and got the same result (after installation, black screen
>once we go past the grub menu).
>
>Does anyone know what's happening? Has anyone got the TBS 20220424 drivers
>work with Ubuntu?
>
>Thank you

I use the other drivers with my TBS6909 and TBS6209 cards:

https://github.com/tbsdtv/linux_media/wiki

If you go to the Downloads page for the TBS6904SE card:

https://www.tbsdtv.com/download/index.html?path=13&id=137

it is the "Open Source Linux Driver" download link, above the one for
the tbs-open-linux-drivers_v20220424.zip file.

These drivers work well with most TBS cards, but occasionally there
can be problems compiling and installing them when they have not yet
been updated for the latest kernel.  That happened to me when I tried
to install them in a 22.04 virtual machine a few weeks ago.  So I put
off upgrading my 20.04 MythTV boxes to 22.04 at that time.  I have
just updated my 22.04 VM to the latest kernel and tried installing
them again, and it is now working.  So I would suggest you try them
instead of the older style tbs-open-linux-drivers_v20220424.zip
drivers.  When I last tried the latest version of those drivers, years
ago, they did not work well with the modern TBS cards such as my
TBS6909 and TBS6209.  Since your TBS6904SE card is an even more modern
card than my TB6909 (and likely using the same chipset series), it
will likely have similar problems with the older style drivers.

Look on the prerequisites page:

https://github.com/tbsdtv/linux_media/wiki/Prerequisites,-Build-errors-and-Rebuilding

for what you need to install to build them.  Plus you will need to
install git.  So this should work:

apt install git gcc patchutils libproc-processtable-perl

You may also need to install the kernel headers as per those pages - I
already had them installed in my VM, but that may have happened when I
installed the VirtualBox compatibility packages, which get compiled
against the current kernel.

Make sure you also install the TBS firmware files - one or two of them
are normally needed with TBS cards.  See the "Firmware" section on the
build page.  I think you will likely need the dvb-fe-mxl5xx.fw file as
well, as mentioned in the "Can not find the 6909 firmware" section, as
I think the TBS6904SE will be using a variant of the mxl5xx chipset.

You will need to follow this procedure to reinstall the drivers every
time a new kernel is installed.