Hi,

I was finally brave enough to upgrade my long standing R4V5 system to R5C7 over the weekend. I had a few problems but they were sorted out quickly and easily and the system runs like a champ. I did notice that if I used the bootsplash on my system with the PVR350 TV out, X would not start and the load up of the front end would fail. Of course the developers did warn during the install that the bootsplash uses the Frame buffer but I was curious to see if it would work on the PVR350.

While I was reading over at Jarod's site ( The guy who put together Fedora Core Mythtv guide) he has in his directions a patch to patch the mkinitrd file and rebuild the ram disk. This is so that during boot up the ivtv drivers will load early enough allowing you to see the system onscreen from the PVR350 TV out as the system boots and not just when the front end loads.

I would like to see if it would be possible to do the same for the Knoppmyth install, that way I can see what's going on during boot.

Can this be accomplished? the code in Jarod's guide for the mkinitrd patch is below, when I tried to modify it to try and match the Knoppmyth install I still recieved errors during the patch:

**********************Start Patch File**************************
--- /sbin/mkinitrd 2004-10-24 14:59:42.000000000 -0700
+++ /sbin/mkinitrd-ivtv 2005-02-19 22:10:41.351615000 -0800
@@ -57,9 +57,9 @@
echo "usage: `basename $0` [--version] [-v] [-f] [--preload <module>]" >&2
echo " [--omit-scsi-modules] [--omit-raid-modules] [--omit-lvm-modules]" >&2
echo " [--with=<module>] [--image-version] [--fstab=<fstab>] [--nocompress]" >&2
- echo " [--builtin=<module>] [--nopivot] <initrd-image> <kernel-version>" >&2
- echo "" >&2
- echo " (ex: `basename $0` /boot/initrd-2.2.5-15.img 2.2.5-15)" >&2
+ echo " [--builtin=<module>] [--nopivot] [--ivtvdev] <initrd-image>" >&2
+ echo " <kernel-version>" >&2
+ echo " (ex: `basename $0` /boot/initrd-2.6.10-15.img 2.6.10-15)" >&2
exit 1
}

@@ -266,6 +266,9 @@
--allow-missing)
allowmissing=yes
;;
+ --ivtvdev)
+ USE_IVTVDEV=yes
+ ;;
*)
if [ -z "$target" ]; then
target=$1
@@ -564,6 +567,16 @@
rmdir $MNTPOINT/lost+found >/dev/null 2>&1
fi

+if [ -n "$USE_IVTVDEV" ]; then
+ findmodule tveeprom-ivtv
+ findmodule msp3400-ivtv
+ findmodule saa7115
+ findmodule tuner
+ findmodule saa7127
+ findmodule ivtv
+ findmodule ivtv-fb
+fi
+
mkdir -p $MNTIMAGE
mkdir -p $MNTIMAGE/lib
mkdir -p $MNTIMAGE/bin
@@ -575,6 +588,11 @@
mkdir -p $MNTIMAGE/sysroot
ln -s bin $MNTIMAGE/sbin

+if [ -n "$USE_IVTVDEV" ]; then
+ mkdir -p $MNTIMAGE/lib/modules
+ cp /lib/modules/ivtv-fw*.bin $MNTIMAGE/lib/modules/
+fi
+
inst /sbin/nash "$MNTIMAGE/bin/nash"
inst /sbin/insmod.static "$MNTIMAGE/bin/insmod"
ln -s /sbin/nash $MNTIMAGE/sbin/modprobe
************************end of patch file***********************


Thanks.

That sounds like a really neat idea. It could deffently help with trouble shooting a system hooked up to a TV that doesn't have a regular monitor. Sometimes knoppmyth takes a long time to startup, and it could look like a hang. But maybe the system is just running the disk error check? this modification would let the user see that is happening.

The bootsplash & pvr-350 tv-out problem is known and I think is being worked on for the next release. You can fix it by manually editing your XF86Config-4 file and changing fb0 to fb1.

My PVR350 uses fb0...if I change it to fb1 will it stop working? As of now the bootsplash isn't really impoertant as by the time the ivtv drivers load up to display anything I will already be in the MythTV frontend.

If you enable bootsplash then fb0 will be used for that. When the ivtv drivers load fb0 will already be in use. So the pvr-350 will be assigned the next framebuffer device "fb1".

I agree there is not much point in enabling bootsplash with a system that uses only a pvr-350 for output.

So could loading the ivtv drivers into ram disk work for knoppmyth as it does for Fedora Core 4?

I'm not a linux expert and was just wondering if I can somehow modify the code I pasted in an earlier message to work with Knoppmyth.

Thanks.

Been on my todo for some time now.. Hope to get to it soon.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

Thanks Cesman!

Hopefully the code from Jarod's site can help you out a bit that I posted earlier.

If and when you do get to it, will you post an anouncement, be part of a patch or go into a future release when it's complete?

Thanks again.

Future.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!