Troubleshooting

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'

mplayer /tmp/test_capture.mpg

• see if there there is come Tv show, in the captured mpg.

Diagnosing Problems

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

dmesg 

Look in between the two blocks for START IVTV and END IVTV. If you see any errors about "unable to load firmware" or "missing module" or anything like that, go into #ubuntu and see if you can grab some help or post on the forums.

Error Loading Firmware

I had issues with the firmware trying to be load, turned out the softlinks in /lib/firmware needed to be actual copies of the file (if they are softlinks for you).

sudo cp v4l-cx2341x-dec.fw ivtv-fw-dec.bin

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. 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

=== 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}}} (Here I'm showing an example with two cards. If you only have one.... ivtv: Initialized WinTV PVR 250, card #0 

doesn't help diagnose but is a yes/no answer to if it's starting on boot.