Are there any updated instructions for Linux with HD-PVRs?

[sdsean]

I spent a long time today reading through dozens of posts but really can't find anything that's conclusive and most of it is very old. . .

The most recent relevant post i could find is this one:
https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56047

I have 4 HD-PVRs (not version 2), and I want to switch my setup to Linux so I can use a 64bit JVM. Do I need drivers? How do I install them? Is serial port tuning available in Linux?

[stuckless]

You should be prepared for bit of work. Depending on which HDPVRs you have, they'll just work. If have linux setup, the easiest way to see if they work, is just plug them all in, and then check to see if /dev/video0 (and video1,2,3) exists. If so then they are working.

The IR blasting on the HDPVR will not work (at least not for 4 units), so you will need to use something like USB-UIRT and get it working using LIRC (there are posts about it as well).

If you are not familiar with linux this will likely be really frustrating.

I think if you use docker (or unRAID + Docker) it might help somewhat with the setup... ie, Docker takes care of installing SageTV, installing comskip binaries, installing gentuner (which might be used for ir blasting, etc).

[sdsean]

Yeah I'm prepared for the work :P

No IRBlasters so that's just fine. . . does serial tuning work?

[swyman18]

Originally Posted by sdsean

I spent a long time today reading through dozens of posts but really can't find anything that's conclusive and most of it is very old. . .

The most recent relevant post i could find is this one:
https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56047

I have 4 HD-PVRs (not version 2), and I want to switch my setup to Linux so I can use a 64bit JVM. Do I need drivers? How do I install them? Is serial port tuning available in Linux?

I have an HD-PVR 2 I was hoping to be able to get working with the Linux version as well. I was able to download the driver from Hauppage and successfully get their test app working. But I am still looking for a step by step process to get SageTV to recognize it, if it's even possible.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by sdsean

Yeah I'm prepared for the work :P

No IRBlasters so that's just fine. . . does serial tuning work?

UNfortunately I don't know... Gentuner exists... so if there is a script program that can be used to tune, then gentuner can be used to integrate into that, but I don't know if direct serial tuning works out of the box.

[wayner]

Does anyone know if firewire works for channel tuning in Linux, especially on 64 bit builds? In the GenTuner repository there is something called generic.panelctl that calls the panelctl firewire tuning program.

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by wayner

Does anyone know if firewire works for channel tuning in Linux, especially on 64 bit builds? In the GenTuner repository there is something called generic.panelctl that calls the panelctl firewire tuning program.

The gentuner.PANELCTL was submitted by a user and it was working well for him. I don't think the FireWire 32/64 bit issue is a problem on Linux. I have seen reports on MythTV forums of users using FireWire on 64 bit Linux.

I have not have an STB capable of FireWire tuning in several years, but when I did, my own results were spotty. However, my conclusion at the time was that the problems were more due to the STB itself, not the Linux support.

There are some notes on this page about card/STB combinations that have worked with MythTV (https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/FireWire). I would expect the same combinations would work with gentuner.

--John

[zoop]

Originally Posted by wayner

Does anyone know if firewire works for channel tuning in Linux, especially on 64 bit builds? In the GenTuner repository there is something called generic.panelctl that calls the panelctl firewire tuning program.

Worked out of the box for me on an ubuntu 16.04 64-bit sage v9 build. FireWire to a verizon FIOS STB.

/jer

[wayner]

Good to know - my boxes are SA/Cisco but they have active firewire which I have used for about a decade or so with Sage. I will have to make sure I have a firewire card in my new server.

Are you running straight from Ubuntu rather than through unRAID?

[zoop]

Originally Posted by wayner

Good to know - my boxes are SA/Cisco but they have active firewire which I have used for about a decade or so with Sage. I will have to make sure I have a firewire card in my new server.

Are you running straight from Ubuntu rather than through unRAID?

Yep, in a full VM actually (kvm/qemu) with VT-d for pci passthrough so the FireWire device is native to the VM.

[wayner]

Thanks zoop, I will have to give it a try.

[Vaskill]

Originally Posted by zoop

Worked out of the box for me on an ubuntu 16.04 64-bit sage v9 build. FireWire to a verizon FIOS STB.

/jer

Zoop, do you mean SageTV out of the box or GenTuner out of the box? Just curious as I too am just finishing a test setup in a Ubuntu 9.10 VM (VMWare ESXi) and my last step is to enable FireWire tuning.

So far, a great experiance going to LInux with V9.x. I kinda wish I had done this when it first became opensource. Even the SMB/CIFS mounts to my Win10 file server is faster... very impressed.

4vpu, 6GB ram VM with 2xHD PVR v1.F, 1xHD PVR v2.C, 2x HDHomeRun ATSC network encoders, 26TB Win10n64bit DrivePool file server & minimal WinXP32bit just for FireWire tuning remotely from current WIn10Sage/Plex server.
4 x HD300 STB, 2 AppleTV G4 wPlex, 1x SageTV client

[wayner]

And what else is a dependency that has to be installed? Do you have to install libav1394?

[zoop]

I was referring to native sage firewire tuning, not using gentuner... and nope, i didn't have to install libavc1394 as it was already present in my install:

root@sagetv:~# dpkg -l |grep 1394
ii libavc1394-0:amd64 0.5.4-4 amd64 control IEEE 1394 audio/video devices

[SageWizdom]

As you install this, please keep track of what problems you ran into, what you had to install, etc. I would like to keep updating the scripted linux install to help with different types of hardware, but I only have the HDHomeRun... others experiences and ability to script/learn is greatly appreciated.

[Vaskill]

Originally Posted by zoop

I was referring to native sage firewire tuning, not using gentuner... and nope, i didn't have to install libavc1394 as it was already present in my install:

root@sagetv:~# dpkg -l |grep 1394
ii libavc1394-0:amd64 0.5.4-4 amd64 control IEEE 1394 audio/video devices

Ah, yes, I now see the option to have FireWire tuning. Will test with SA3250HD and SA4250HD. Funny though, when I first installed HDPVR 1212 revF, the option didn't come up. Only when I removed and re-added.

[wayner]

@vaskill - Please document the process so that those of us, like me, who will be trying this can benefit from your experience. And we can also get stuckless to add this to the Docker container.

[Vaskill]

Originally Posted by SageWizdom

As you install this, please keep track of what problems you ran into, what you had to install, etc. I would like to keep updating the scripted linux install to help with different types of hardware, but I only have the HDHomeRun... others experiences and ability to script/learn is greatly appreciated.

Based on v2 install script, there were two missing packages, I had to add:

sudo apt-get install v4l-utils
sudo apt-get install ivtv-utils

Now FireWire captures fine. Still working on testing multi-box/HDPVR tuning. Also haven't tried my HDPRV 2.

[wayner]

I see that the SageTV docker seems to have the firewire drivers as when I do dpkg -l |grep 1394 I see the three required packages. But where do you go from there? When I look at gentuner it uses the file /usr/local/bin/panelctl. But I don't have anything in /usr/local/bin

[stuckless]

gentuner is just a way to have sagetv call a script to change channels. It's up to you to actually write the script (either modify the samples, or create your own). You'd have to figure out how to change channels using command line on linux, then put a gentuner script around that.

There is documentation on gentuner here.
https://github.com/stuckless/GenericTunerPlugin