James Gregory wrote:
It installs a second, parallel version of v4l2 and effectively disables the one that comes with your kernel. It does so by renaming the symbols provided by the old kernel modules. I guess if that works for you, then that's fine. Having attempted to turn Chris' drivers into a kernel patch, I can tell you that there's some pretty fundamental differences between the two versions. The approach of "let's just clobber some symbols" makes me pretty nervous about the whole thing.
To clarify, what C Pascoe had done is added a functionality to v4l2. This functionality
is known to us as 'device driver' or 'FusionHDTV device driver' to be specific. Nothing
has been disabled or clobbered just as nothing is disabled or clobbered within the kernel
code when you add device drivers for disk drives, ethernet cards, or any device for that
matter. With C Pascoe's device driver he is adding functionility to v4l2. He is not taking
away or clobber or disable anything.
The symbol-tables is a way of registering modules so the kernel will know to load
that module when required.
If it built cleanly against the upstream version of v4l2 I'd have no
problem with it.
It does actually.
There are two (2) scripts that you need to manage C Pascoe device drivers, namely:
1. DVB-Build.sh - Used in three ways
a. DVB-Build.sh remove-symbols - to reconcile version numbers.
b.DVB-Build.sh clean - to clean up stale binaries in preparation for compile.
c. DVB-Build.sh - to compile inorder to produce the loadable modules.
2. DVB-Init.sh - Use in three ways to manage the modules
a. DVB-Init.sh start - to load the modules. You may use 'dmesg' or 'lsmod' or
'rmmod' to manage the modules.
b. DVB-Init.sh stop - to unload all modules loaded in 2.a.
c. DVB-Init.sh reload - unload and then load all the modules.
I realise he's provided a work-around, just be sure you understand what you're doing and make sure you're ok with the risk of stuff breaking now, or in the future.
I believed I understand what he'd done and am comfortable with it and when
something breaks I know when it breaks. It is a full function device driver he'd
done, not just a work-around.
I beg to disagree that C Pascoe has a 'dodgy method which involves mangling the moduleUnless you're more of a kernel build
ninja than I am, you won't be able to do a clean build of it and you'll
need to use the rather dodgy method described on Chris Pascoe's website,
which involves mangling the module dependencies file.
dependencies file'. I agree his website is a bit confusing as to how to install his device
drivers. But the package contains everything one needs to make it work. And I was able
to make it work cleanly in less than 10 minutes.
In fact his methods and procedures are 'clean' and 'straight-forward'
as all that one has to do is use two (2) scripts to manage the compilations, loading, and unloading
of modules, namely: DVB-Build.sh and DVB-Init.sh. And these two scripts are all included
in the source codes tar file. In fact I installed the device drivers to recognise the FusionHDTV
hardware in no time, like 10 minutes. No kernel re-compile and system reboot needed.
One cannot be more simpler than that when it comes to managements of device drivers.
I consider his FusionHDTV a professional job and NOT some kind of 'cowboy'
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