[mythtv-users] Lirc doesn't work with Artful

[Stephen Worthington]

On Tue, 20 Mar 2018 22:05:59 -0400, you wrote:


>On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 9:32 PM, Stephen Worthington <
>stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 20 Mar 2018 18:23:56 -0400, you wrote:
>>
>> >Hello,
>> >I upgraded a frontend to Ubuntu 17.10 Artful. Everything just works except
>> >lirc and my remote control.
>> >
>> >When I "sudo dpkg-reconfigure lirc-modules-source" I get the error message
>> >"dpkg-query: package 'lirc-modules-source' is not installed and no
>> >information is available".
>> >
>> >Any help? Is there another script I should be using, or is Myth just
>> >partially broken WRT lirc for Artful?
>> >
>> >Thanks in advance.
>> >
>> >Steve
>>
>> What did you upgrade from?  If it was old enough, there will have been
>> lots of changes in the infrared drivers, as they were moved into the
>> kernel somewhere around Ubuntu 14.04.  That broke lots of lirc setups.
>>
>> And lirc itself has finally been updated to a much newer version
>> between 16.04 and 17.10.  I am not sure whether it happened in 17.04
>> or 17.10.  In 16.04 lirc is 0.9.0, which is well out of date.  In
>> 17.10 it is 0.10.0 which is after major changes to lirc - it how uses
>> a python frontend to do its config, and I believe the config files
>> have changed considerably.  But 0.10.0 is also much more powerful and
>> some of the new config options are very useful.
>>
>> https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=lirc
>> http://www.lirc.org

>Updated from 17.04 (not an antique).
>
>I guess I'll have to break out the lirc documentation, unless someone has
>written a walk-through? Are there any real advantages to the devinput
>driver?
>
>Steve

That depends on what remote receiver you are using.  If the non-kernel
drivers still work for you, then that is fine.  They did not for me
(MCE remotes), so I converted to devinput and that has worked fine
ever since.  But it took several days of hard work to find out exactly
how to make it work.  I have my setup on my web server, if you would
like to use it as a base to work from:

http://www.jsw.gen.nz/mythtv/mythbuntu-devinput-lirc.bz2

I am still on 16.04, so it does not include any of the changes for the
lirc update from 0.9.0 to the Python versions.  I do have 17.10 on my
test box, and am intending to put 18.04 on there as soon as it is
released and try the lirc changes there before I upgrade my production
systems.  I am guessing that most people are still using 16.04 like me
and there will be quite a few who have problems like you do when the
18.04 upgrade happens.  But I have seen some messages about the Python
config changes, so do try googling before you try to do it all
yourself.