[mythtvnz] SkyStar 2 DVB-S card failing to load after 20.04 upgrade

[Wade Maxfield]

> On 17/10/2021, at 23:19, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
> 
> I am not familiar with the Skystar 2 cards, but I do have a TBS6909.
> It requires compiling its version of the Linux DVB driver code, and in
> the past doing that has caused incompatibility with some older cards.
> So the first thing I would try would be to remove and reinstall your
> current kernel and see if it will run the Skystar 2 cards with the
> normal kernel DVB drivers.  Then compile and install the TBS drivers
> and see if that causes the problem.  To do that, you need to reboot to
> the older kernel that should still be installed, then remove the newer
> kernel packages and then reinstall them.  Then reboot to the newer
> kernel.
> 

Thanks, shall give this a try in the next day or so.  I’ve never played round with removing and reinstalling the kernel, so it might take me a bit to try this.


> And I am not sure why you would be needing to use the old DVB-S cards
> anyway - the TBS6909 has 8 DVB-S(2) tuners, so there should not be any
> need to have two more on the old DVB-S cards.

Carry overs from before the TBS6909, plus my EPG scripts were all set up using my SkyStar cards which I knew weren’t likely to be involved in a recording at the time the scripts ran.  

If I abandon trying to get the SkyStars working and focus on EPG gathering by the TBS6909 instead, that might be a better use of effort.

My previously working scripts used dvbstream to open the card, then & epgsnoop to scrape the data, then close dvbstream after.  That’s not working now.


Currently dvbstream using the TBS card (lnb is 11300, so trying sky frequency 12519 - 11300 is 1219)


me$ dvbstream -c 2 -s 22500 -f 1219 -p h -n 600 8192
dvbstream v0.7 - (C) Dave Chapman 2001-2004
Released under the GPL.
Latest version available from http://www.linuxstb.org/
Tuning to 1219 Hz
Using DVB card "TurboSight TBS 6909 DVB-S/S2 ", freq=1219
tuning DVB-S to Freq: 1219000, Pol:H Srate=22500000, 22kHz tone=off, LNB: 0, SLOF 11700, LOF1: 9750, LOF2: 10600
Setting only tone ON and voltage 18V
DISEQC SETTING SUCCEEDED
Getting frontend status
Not able to lock to the signal on the given frequency
dvbstream will stop after 600 seconds (10 minutes)
Using 224.0.1.2:5004:2
version=2
Streaming 1 stream



I think the "Not able to lock to the signal on the given frequency” is the issue, but I don’t know what is the root cause.  Those were the settings I have been using in my epg scripts.


And trying the currently recognised SkyStar

me$ dvbstream -c 0 -s 22500 -f 1219 -p h -n 600 8192
dvbstream v0.7 - (C) Dave Chapman 2001-2004
Released under the GPL.
Latest version available from http://www.linuxstb.org/
Tuning to 1219 Hz
Using DVB card "ST STV0299 DVB-S", freq=1219
tuning DVB-S to Freq: 1219000, Pol:H Srate=22500000, 22kHz tone=off, LNB: 0, SLOF 11700, LOF1: 9750, LOF2: 10600
Setting only tone ON and voltage 18V
DISEQC SETTING FAILED
dvbstream will stop after 600 seconds (10 minutes)
Using 224.0.1.2:5004:2
version=2
Streaming 1 stream




Trying dvbtune instead with TBS

me$ dvbtune -f 1219000 -s 22500 -p H -tone 0 -c 2
Using DVB card "TurboSight TBS 6909 DVB-S/S2 "
tuning DVB-S to L-Band:0, Pol:H Srate=22500000, 22kHz=off
polling....
Getting frontend event
FE_STATUS:
polling....
Getting frontend event
FE_STATUS: FE_HAS_SIGNAL
polling....
polling....
polling….


But SkyStar

me$ dvbtune -f 1219000 -s 22500 -p H -tone 0 -c 0
Using DVB card "ST STV0299 DVB-S"
tuning DVB-S to L-Band:0, Pol:H Srate=22500000, 22kHz=off
polling....
Getting frontend event
FE_STATUS:
polling....
Getting frontend event
FE_STATUS: FE_HAS_SIGNAL FE_HAS_LOCK FE_HAS_CARRIER FE_HAS_VITERBI FE_HAS_SYNC
Event:  Frequency: 10969837
        SymbolRate: 22500000
        FEC_inner:  3

Bit error rate: 112
Signal strength: 50371
SNR: 54006
FE_STATUS: FE_HAS_SIGNAL FE_HAS_LOCK FE_HAS_CARRIER FE_HAS_VITERBI FE_HAS_SYNC


Then running tv_grab_dvb_plus works:

me$ tv_grab_dvb_plus -d error -a 0 -f skyNZ -o /tmp/sky.xml -s /home/me/.tvgrabdvbplus


So I might experiment more with this and abandon dvbstream.  I’ve just figured out that epgsnoop has it’s own tuning option and using that with the skystar also worked. 

me$ epgsnoop --adapter 0 --tune 12519 --lnb 11300 --config-dir /home/myth/.epgsnoop/freeview/ > /tmp/freeview.xml

So I just need to play round with getting this going with the TBS6909 instead, then I can physically remove the SkyStars from the machine…. 8)


 - Wade