Possible removal of saa7146 and ttpci drivers from kernel tree

Apparently nobody else here is interested in keeping the full-featured DVB cards alive for VDR!?

If so, I will not waste my time investigating and fixing this problem - or maybe only for myself.

Regards,

S:oren

S:oren ,

I'm not that familiar with these changes.

But does that mean that the TT6400 no longer works either? Then I'm very interested in keeping these alive.

But what can we do?

I am very grateful that you have kept the drivers for the TT6400 alive so far and I wish, you would continue to do so in the future.

I will use the TT6400 here for as long as possible.

Grüße

kamel5

I am interested in keeping the TT S2-1600 working.

I have no idea, what would be required in order to shift from videobuf1 to videobuf2, though.

I guess, I am one of the last users of the SD-FF, but I am interested to keep it running. At least for for a while.

(Zumindest, solange es die Privaten FTA nur in SD gibt.

An die Zapping-Performance kommt bislang einfach nichts ran und ich zappe nunmal leidenschaltlich gern )

I am even more interested in keeping the TT-Budgets working. I have a few of them, still good cards.

My knowledge about the driver-internals is very limited, but I did some quick research last week.

There is Documentation about Videobuf and Videobuf2 API, which looks useful to me.

Affected files are at: drivers/media/common/saa7146/saa7146* .

The av7110*, budget* and ttpci* files doesn't seem to be affected. (Just a quick search, maybe I missed something).

If I am right, it is doable without understanding the whole driver.

I will try it some time, if nobody else does, but I am afraid that would be to late.

Hi, ich nutze die FF vom ersten Tag an im 7*24 Betrieb. Bin weiterhin am Verbleib in den Kernel-Sourcen interessiert. Bin auch bereit zu helfen , kann aber programmiertechnisch kein Beitrag leisten.

Quote from tmn505

there's also possibility to simply strip the video input capabilities from the driver.

I doubt that that is possible.

I'm not sure, but Videobuf seems to be used to transfer the DVB-Data too.

Falls das Anfang 2023 raus fliegt, ist es dann zuletzt in Kernel 6.1 als deprecated und in 6.0 regulär.

Wahrscheinlich wird 6.1 oder vielleicht 6.0 LTS Support bekommen.

Mit etwas Glück hält das bis Ende 2028, mindestens jedoch bis Ende 2025.

Mit der passenden LTS Distribution oder wenn man seinen Kernel selbst baut, hat man da also noch Zeit.

Trotzdem schade um die Budget Karten

Hi,

Ich verwende keine FF Karten mehr.

Ich würde mir im Kernel aktuelle und gepflegte Treiber für Budget Karten wünschen.

Das scheint aber nicht möglich zu sein, bei dem derzeitigen Maintener (?).

~ Markus

Quote from tmn505

Sorry, I should be more specific, I meant the budget cards supported by ttpci driver (didn't realize that saa7146 also support particular budget cards). From brief look at the source, only ttpci/budget-av.c contains videobuf references.

Our DVB budget cards are supported by the ttpci driver.

I thought there were dependencies to saa7146 driver. But I probably remembered wrong.

(Long time since my last contact with the driver source .)

For the ones interested in an example how such a conversion patch will look like:

em28xx: convert to videobuf2

s2255drv: upgrade to videobuf2

cx25821: convert to vb2

Pretty big patches, more work than I expected.

Some discussions here, at least.

For me, the videobuf2 conversion itself is not a big problem. A can do that, and test that on a SD-FF (AV7110) card. For SAA7146 budget cards I would need other testers, who also will provide Tested-by tags to the media mailing list.

Technically that is just work where I probably can do the programming part over the Christmas holidays.

The real problem - as always with linux-media - is political, see drivers/staging/media/deprecated/saa7146/av7110/TODO (v6.1-rc8):

- This driver is too old and relies on a different API.
  Drop it from Kernel on a couple of versions.
- Cleanup patches for the drivers here won't be accepted.

What the "different API" is, what the problem with old but used and maintained hardware+drivers is, and how this relates to

If someone is interested in doing this work, then contact the
linux-media mailinglist

in the same file probably can only understand linux-media "maintainers".

For me "patches won't be accepted" is the opposite of maintenance.

If somebody else wants to discuss this on the linux-media mailing list, I'm happy to join this discussion (please cc: me). As it stands now, doing all the work with the clear prospect of not being accepted makes no sense at all for me.

Besides that, last time I fought for these drivers, exactly nobody from the VDR community supported me on the mailing list. And this is not about 'programming or reviewing these patches is too complicated for me'. Just 'I use this and plan to do so as long as possible', 'I'm happy to see this driver upstream and supported in distribution xy', or 'I would even be more happy to also see the related saa716x driver upstream' would counter the usual 'this is old and irrelevant anyway'.

Yes, this also relates to the HD-FF (saa716x) cards. videobuf2 conversion will be necessary here too (but this makes sense for linux overall), further crippling the DVB API upstream instead will make live increasingly complicated for this driver, without any technical reason.

I always liked to maintain these drivers and to adapt everything required for modern linux versions. But I'm really tired of all the political discussions. Without at least a little bit of help from the community at linux-media, I cannot promise to continue support.

Regards,

S:oren

Well, the question is what they mean when saying "Cleanup patches"?

They already accepted patches for other cards.

So I am not sure, if your concern, just from reading a comment, is justified. But who knows ...

It would be great, if you would do the the videobuf2 conversion.

I would be willing to test on a budget card and also to provide a Tested-by tag.

Quote from jrie

Well, the question is what they mean when saying "Cleanup patches"?

The whole purpose of a TODO file in a staging driver is to tell what needs to be done to get this out of staging.

Quote from jrie

They already accepted patches for other cards.

Great, linux-media is not completely dead. A little bit of work is still be done. What a great achievement, for payed maintainers/supporters.

Quote from jrie

So I am not sure, if your concern, just from reading a comment, is justified. But who knows ...

Well, not all TODO files have this content. But the file for my card's driver has.

So you tell me, I'm to dumb to understand the subtleties here!? Thanks!

Quote from jrie

It would be great, if you would do the the videobuf2 conversion.

I would be willing to test on a budget card and also to provide a Tested-by tag.

So you ask me to to do the work for your card, while not supporting to keep my card alive!? What I great incentive to spend my holiday time...

Was für eine Unterstützung willst du denn haben?

Hat doch erst Sinn, wenn ein Patch da ist, oder?

Der Unterschied zwischen den drei TODOs ist schon auffällig:

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/…TODO?h=v6.1-rc8

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/…TODO?h=v6.1-rc8

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/…TODO?h=v6.1-rc8

Klar willst du die Arbeit nicht umsonst machen.

Falls du einen Patch für die Umstellung machst, und der nicht akzeptiert würde, könnte man den aber immer noch als Selbstkernelbauer anwenden, oder?

Warum sind die beim AV7110 so unwillig?

Weil es mauro ist...

Quote from jrie

Was für eine Unterstützung willst du denn haben?

Welcher Teil meines Angebots an die Community genau ist denn unklar?

Quote from jrie

Hat doch erst Sinn, wenn ein Patch da ist, oder?

Äh, nein. Es geht hier nicht um technische Fragen (die immer loesbar sind).

Quote from jrie

Falls du einen Patch für die Umstellung machst, und der nicht akzeptiert würde, könnte man den aber immer noch als Selbstkernelbauer anwenden, oder?

Selbstverstaendlich. Nur wenn ich keinerlei, exakt Null, Unterstuetzung fuer die FF-Karten bei linux-media bekomme, warum sollte ich so einen Patch bauen und veroeffentlichen? Passende Budget-Karten habe ich nicht, und auch keine Langeweile.

Wenn ich es richtig verstehe, bezieht sich die Aussage „keine Patches“ nur auf den dvbttpci Treiber wegen der darin enthaltenen alten DVB Decoder API.

Eingereichte Patches bezüglich videobuf2 für Saa7146-basierte Budgetkarten akzeptiert zu bekommen wäre demnach kein Problem.

Aber lohnt der Aufwand denn wirklich? Hat irgendwer diese alte Hardware heutzutage noch im Einsatz auf Systemen, die nicht auch notfalls mit altem Kernel noch weiterlaufen könnten?

Unterstützung für FF-Karten betreffend sind also Besitzer einer solchen Karte gefragt. Ich habe keine.

Ich hatte hier im Forum auch schon mal um Unterstützung für ein Kernel Modul für den IRMP Keyboard Empfänger gebeten. Null Reaktion. Ja, das ist frustrierend. Meinen Patch habe ich trotzdem veröffentlicht. Weil ich es wollte.