Well, I've wanted to get this card working for a while. So, I'll start reading up on sysfs.txt and see what I can do. Are there any examples of how to do it with other DVB cards? I suppose other cards need the i2c interface also.
-Brian
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Hunold [mailto:hunold@convergence.de]
Sent: Wed 8/13/2003 1:13 AM
To: Brian Korsedal
Cc: linux-dvb@linuxtv.org; schirmer@taytron.net
Subject: Re: [linux-dvb] Nebula card supported by bttv in 2.6-test3, but no bt878 in kerne l
Hello Brian,
> I want to get my Nebula card working under Linux. I've been active on
> this list and I've tried several of the suggestions. For some reason,
> none of them have worked. I've noticed that in the recent release of
> the kernel, the Nebula Digitv card is included in bttv.
The name entry was included by Gerd Knorr, that's right, so that the
bttv driver recognises the device -- not more, not less. There is no
additional functionality within bttv.
> A few days ago
> (when I first spotted the test3 release) I tried it with the cvs release
> of dvb-kernel. I was not able to make a working kernel.
dvb-kernel and test3 are very close in sync. It's possible that the
"makelinks" approach of patching the kernel does not work at the moment.
The Nebula driver, however, won't work unless you apply the i2c-bttv-patch.
> Has anyone
> else been able to use this card with this kernel? Now that there is
> bttv support, will the bt878 driver be included in future kernel
> releases? Will there be patches?
The problem is, that the i2c-bttv patch is refused by Gerd Knorr. But
IMHO Gerd is correct, the patch is hackish: it exports the i2c interface
of the bttv driver, so that the DVB i2c stuff can use it. This is likely
to introduce bugs and races.
> Is there anything I can do to speed
> up the process/ what needs to be done?
bttv exports the i2c adapter via the sysfs -- somewhat similar to
procfs, but better, have a look at Documentation/filesystems/sysfs.txt.
So it should be possible to replace the calls to the hackish
"give-me-the-i2c-adapter" function and get access to the i2c adapter via
the sysfs interface instead.
So someone with a Nebula card, a recent test3 kernel and knowledge about
sysfs and kernel development should be able to get it work.
I wrote a private mail to the driver author, but I did not receive an
answer yet. Perhaps he's busy, I've included him as CC, so perhaps he
can tell us if he can look after this.
> -Brian
CU
Michael.