Troubleshooting

Check IVTV is initialized

Run:

• dmesg |grep Initialized

You should see something like:

• ivtv: Initialized WinTV PVR 250, card #0
  ivtv: Initialized WinTV PVR 350, card #1

This example shows two cards. If you only have one, you will see results similar to this:

• ivtv: Initialized WinTV PVR 250, card #0 

This is a good way to identify if the card even initially loaded.

Testing Capture

• After the driver is loaded, you can test it by doing a simple capture

  • cat /dev/video0 > /tmp/test_capture.mpg

  Let this go for about 5 sec and then press <ctrl> + 'c'

• Attempt to play this back using your favorite media player. (mplayer for the example)

  • mplayer /tmp/test_capture.mpg

• See if you have some recorded content coming up in the test capture.

Poor Audio Quality on a PVR-500

If you are encountering distorted audio, this is a known issue with certain versions of the ivtv driver (and is apparent in the windows driver too). Follow the directions below on this page to upgrade to a newer version. Thanks to jlr4u for verifying that this solved the problem. If you encounter issues still, post in this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=345655

Diagnosing Problems

• Check dmesg to see if there are any errors loading firmware or anything like that.

  dmesg | tac | sed -n '/=\ \ END INIT IVTV\ \ =/,/= START INIT IVTV =/p;/= START INIT IVTV =/q' | tac

If you see any errors that are not covered below, go into #ubuntu and see if you can grab some help or post on the forums.

Errors during modprobe

If you encounter errors similar to:

• sudo modprobe ivtv
  FATAL: Error inserting ivtv (/lib/modules/2.6.17-10-generic/ivtv/ivtv.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

and check dmesg to see similar things to this:

• [17182375.312000] ivtv: disagrees about version of symbol video_unregister_device
  [17182375.312000] ivtv: Unknown symbol video_unregister_device
  [17182375.312000] ivtv: disagrees about version of symbol video_device_alloc
  [17182375.312000] ivtv: Unknown symbol video_device_alloc
  [17182375.312000] ivtv: disagrees about version of symbol video_register_device
  [17182375.312000] ivtv: Unknown symbol video_register_device
  [17182375.312000] ivtv: disagrees about version of symbol video_device_release
  [17182375.312000] ivtv: Unknown symbol video_device_release
  [17182762.044000] ivtv: disagrees about version of symbol video_unregister_device
  [17182762.044000] ivtv: Unknown symbol video_unregister_device
  [17182762.044000] ivtv: disagrees about version of symbol video_device_alloc
  [17182762.044000] ivtv: Unknown symbol video_device_alloc
  [17182762.044000] ivtv: disagrees about version of symbol video_register_device
  [17182762.044000] ivtv: Unknown symbol video_register_device
  [17182762.044000] ivtv: disagrees about version of symbol video_device_release
  [17182762.044000] ivtv: Unknown symbol video_device_release

you will need to reinstall the running linux image. This can be caused by overwriting the modules necessary for ivtv to work.

Reinstall the linux image:

• sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-image-`uname -r`
  sudo depmod -a

Follow the steps to rebuild the modules.

Resource allocation errors

There are two possible solutions to resource allocation problems:

• Be sure that you have enabled APIC on your machine's BIOS. This will guarantee enough resources are allocated for the device.

  See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=284041 for more information.

• Add  vmalloc=192m  to your kernel boot parameters.

First make a copy of your old grub configuration. You should do this everytime you make an edit of grub.

cp /boot/grub/menu.list /boot/grub/menu.list.backup

• Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to add the vmalloc=192 to the end of your kernel line:

  • title           Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.17-10-server
    root            (hd0,0)
    kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-10-server root=/dev/hda1 ro quiet splash vmalloc=192m
    initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.17-10-server
    quiet
    savedefault
    boot