[mythtv-users] Suddenly flaky firewire

[Jarod Wilson]

On Feb 4, 2011, at 4:03 PM, Phil Linttell wrote:

>> Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2011 11:54:38 -0600
>> From: Christopher Meredith <chmeredith at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Suddenly flaky firewire
>>>>>> I have been using firewire as an alternate tuner for clear QAM
>>>>>> stations accessible via my cablebox, and as a channel changer for the
>>>>>> same cable box and an HD-PVR. It worked fine until I updated Ubuntu to
>>>>>> Maverick (10.10). Now, the firewire system seems to be really
>>>>>> unstable. It keeps "collapsing" during recordings. When that happens,
>> Thanks for the reply. The upgrade was actually a jump from Mythbuntu
>> 9.10 to Ubuntu 10.10 via the distribution upgrade tool. According to
>> uname, my current kernel is:
>> 
>> I can confirm that I am using the new juju firewire stack. Maybe the
>> best option for me at this point is to try switching back to the old
>> one. Any other thoughts?
> 
> You have a case of bad ju-ju.
> 
> I ran into the same upgrading to 10.10.   I use firewire just for
> channel-changing, but intermittently the firewire bus would just lock
> up....  only pulling the cable and re-inserting it, or powering off and
> on, would fix it.  (unloading/reloading the modules wouldn't clear it.)
> 
> You have a choice of blacklisting juju and going back to the old stack,
> or changing your firewire card.

Or using newer firewire drivers, there's been quite a bit of excellent
work done lately on the firewire drivers, post-2.6.35, all of which has
the potential to be relevant to your situation.


> In my case, I was using a cheap PCI firewire card.  I upgraded my
> motherboard, and have been using the firewire port on the motherboard
> with no issues.

Generally, JMicron chipsets are... well, cheap crap. Of course, so are
VIA, ALi and some others, and TI has put out a few duds as well... And
the latest Agere/LSI chipset goes boom with MSI enabled...

But anyway, much of the work I mentioned was to solidify the firewire
driver stack, particularly in cases where chipsets might do odd things
that aren't necessary spec-compliant or expected...

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com