Set priority for devices and question about activity.

Andy Furniss

Hi.

I've only just found this project and am really impressed - been using dvbstream for years.

I've got git up and running OK on an ancient headless server/gateway PC running linux from scratch and have a couple of questions.

Is it possible to set the priority/preference for the devices - I have a DVB-T PCI card and a USB DVB-T2 PCTV290e. The 290e shows better signal strength than the PCI so seems to get chosen, but this is the opposite of what I want as it could mean conflicts will exist that could be avoided due to the 290e being in use for SD T muxes when the PCI would do thus causing an SD stream to be stopped if an HD T2 mux recording starts. In addition to this I would rather the 290e get less use just so it lasts longer getting less heat cool cycles - it's more expensive and I already have spare PCIs if that dies.

The second issue is more of a curiosity - I was hoping setting disable_pmt_monitor and idleclose would stop background activity and minimise cycles, but this doesn't seem to be the case and the devices are waking up and doing things - what are they doing?

TIA

Andy Furniss

Ok I don't know how I managed to miss the priority box, but I've tried 1, 100 and 1000 but it doesn't seem to work, any ideas?

On the activity question - it seems that OTA EIT was the cause, have now disabled and just have freeview checked in the epg config.

Kev S

If you set the device you want to use most to priority 5, and next one to 10 and so on you'll get what you want. I had to set the value on all tuners for it to appear to do anything. (I have on USB terrestrial tuner that reports a weak signal but actually has the best signal so that is first with my sold satellite tuner last).

OTA does do a lot of channel hopping to get the updated schedule, but AFAICT isn't need for Freeview only.

Andy Furniss

Ahh, lower is better, thanks that helped me sort it.

As it happens 5 and 10 didn't work for me so I started grepping around the code and it looks like it's the type of connection that plays a part.

tda_extrapriority + tda->tda_hostconnection * 10

where for USB tda_hostconnection is 1 or 2 and for PCI it's 3.

I just set 5 (PCI) and 50 (USB) instead of 5 and 10 and it worked.

I guess 0 and something should also work but that's untested :-)

Andy Furniss

Andy Furniss wrote:

> On the activity question - it seems that OTA EIT was the cause, have now disabled and just have freeview checked in the epg config.

It seems I was a bit too hasty in judging this - there still is activity, I guess it's just less/quicker so didn't initially show on my 10 minute fcron job sampling.

Kev S

Didn't realise USB and PCI had different weightings as all my tuners are USB!

Andy Furniss wrote:
> Andy Furniss wrote:
>
> > On the activity question - it seems that OTA EIT was the cause, have now disabled and just have freeview checked in the epg config.
>

> It seems I was a bit too hasty in judging this - there still is activity, I guess it's just less/quicker so didn't initially show on my 10 minute fcron job sampling.

If you access the web interface and click the up arrows then the cogs to put it in debug mode it tells you exactly what is going on - regular updates of the EPGs were the issue here too! (Only really a problem with a cheap DVB-S USB tuner that kept locking up - in the end it was that bad I spent an additional tenner on a decent one!)

Andy Furniss

Kev Swindells wrote:

> If you access the web interface and click the up arrows then the cogs to put it in debug mode it tells you exactly what is going on - regular updates of the EPGs were the issue here too! (Only really a problem with a cheap DVB-S USB tuner that kept locking up - in the end it was that bad I spent an additional tenner on a decent one!)

Thanks, I hadn't noticed that little arrow hiding away in the bottom right.

It doesn't show anything though, I see "Loglevel debug: enabled" when I click the cog but that's it. The adapters will go from idle to tuned without anything else being logged.

I'll investigate further next week.

Andy Furniss

Andy Furniss wrote:

> It doesn't show anything though, I see "Loglevel debug: enabled" when I click the cog but that's it. The adapters will go from idle to tuned without anything else being logged.

I managed to fix this by putting "all" in the subsystems box on the config -> debug page.

It looks to be the default, so I guess because I had previously messed with and saved the debug config page (subsystems box empty) I had unknowingly disabled it.

It is epg scan that is opening the adapters.