I am trying to take some guess work out of debugging cameras and firewire
cards.  I need some help from a C hacker.

Every so often something odd happens that makes me question if all of my
equipment works.   So I am trying to come up with good ways of testing it.
In doing so I have discovered that when I remove a firewire EC card it takes
the kernel 12 seconds to destroy the /dev/fw node.  I have a feeling if I
plug in some other device during that time bad things happen.  I also have a
feeling if a camera is plugged into the card when I insert the card, more
badness.  maybe.  I haven't gotten that far in any sort of formal testing
because I cam still trying to get a grip on what really works.    I now have
some udev rules that beep when the kernel is doing stuff, which I think will
help keep my testing sane.  I don't really care what happens if I un/plug a
card really fast.  I just want for all the beeps to stop, then I know it is
safe.

I have been running a test that
Clemens Ladisch <[email protected]> wrote
http://www.alsa-project.org/~clemens/async-test.c
Stefan Richter <[email protected]> suggested some changes that I
made:
https://gitorious.org/cfk_misc/fwdiag/blobs/master/async-test.c
Wrapped with fw_test.sh and I have been able to figure out that one of my
laptops will not work with any firewire pccard.

So that is progress.  I won't bring that laptop to a show, it will never
cause me to say WTF again.

I asked Clemens
>> Any reason not to add it to http://code.google.com/p/jujuutils/ (also his
code)
> It's not yet user-friendly enough.

Yeah, it could use some love.  Which is why I am posing here: My C skills
are not up to this.

It currently needs to be run twice: 1 to listen, 2nd to send.  to see the
output from both apps I do some crazy stuff with detached screen and xterm.
it should do both send and receive in one instance.

fw_test.sh sends in one direction till I hit enter, then sends in the other
direction.  (the broken laptop only fails in one direction, so this is
needed.)  It should concurrently  send in both directions.

And it tests async transfers, but dv cams are isochronous (or so I was told,
I think)

Here is some more Stefan comments on this project:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=27577985

Anyway, I think everyone on this list knows what would help, so if anyone
can produce something I would really appreciate it.  I'll do what I can to
test and debug, but doing the real work is not something I am suited for.
maybe make python bindings :)


-- 
Carl K
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