Been having trouble getting my IR remote to work on new install of R5F27 - selected Hauppauge Silver at the appropriate point in the install, but no response from the remote after rebooting.
Yet using the same hardware, I have no problems with R5A30.2 and prior.
Then tried a clean install of R5E50 - again, no response from the remote, and irw wouldn't even run (think it said it couldn't connect).
Also manually tried different lircrc and lircd.conf scripts for another remote that I have, but they wouldn't work either with R5E50 or R5F27.
Yet with a clean install of R5A30.2 both my remotes work fine, so I just can't work out why they don't work 'out of the box' with later versions. Perhaps irw's refusal to run might give someone a clue as to what could be the problem here?

Since you didn't provide more details I'm only guessing this is with a PVR card. If so, please see the R5F27 Hints. Searching for "lirc" or Known Issue #5 should turn up the required info.

Thanks tjc, yes, even though I mentioned the Hauppauge remote, the card is actually an Avermedia AVerTV DVB-T 771. But the issue is not just restricted to the Hauppauge remote, and it isn't a case of the remote 'not working well' but rather not workng at all. reveals nothing, so I assume the Aver card doesn't depend on the saa7134 module that you mention in Known Issue #5 on the Hints page. (Nevertheless I tried out your code to stop the loading of various modules; and after that didn't make any difference I also deleted the ir-kbd-i2c.ko driver, but still no joy from the remote.) Attempting to run irw still results in "connect: Connection refused"

Are the modules loaded? : lsmod | grep lirc
Do the devices exist : ls -lR /dev/lir*
Is lircd running : ps -ef | grep lircd
finally what's in /etc/lirc/hardware.conf?

You can also try running mode2, it's lower-level than irw.

Thanks for the suggestions -
Yes, the modules are loaded; the lircd device exists (but not lirc0); and lircd is running (not sure about lirc0).
Now this next bit is kinda weird: after accidentally rebooting while leaving my Hauppauge WinTV-PVR USB2 tuner connected, I noticed everything worked OK - ie. remote works, irw runs, both lircd & lirc0 run OK.
The WinTV-PVR USB2 had not previously been connected to R5F27 or R5E50 and had thus not been setup as a tuner (it had only been connected to my R530A.2 installation). I then tried this a few times and found it to be consistent - as long as I boot up with the WinTV-PVR USB2 connected, my remote works fine. (And if I disconnect the WinTV-PVR USB2 while KM is running, the remote stops working.)
I'm pleased it's working, but needless to say, the reason for it has got me beat!