Using Genius TVGo DVB-T03 on Fedora

My other laptop was not available and the start of Football WM 2014 was just less than 30 minutes away. Let’s see if I can watch it on my laptop with Fedora (16) with my Genius TVGo DVB-T03 device.

The most of the steps were inspired by fedora wiki: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DavidTimms/DVB

DVB-T required package

I installed dvb-apps package via:

sudo yum install dvb-apps

Afterwards checked the file list in package via:

rpm -q --fileprovide dvb-apps

which contained also:

/usr/bin/scandvb

(please note we’ll need this one later).

Firmware

I plugged in my dvb-t usb and seen after running dmesg:

[11140.318728] usb 2-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 6 using ehci-pci
[11140.397936] usb 2-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0458, idProduct=4012
[11140.397946] usb 2-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[11140.397952] usb 2-1.2: Product: DVB-T 2
[11140.397956] usb 2-1.2: Manufacturer: Afatech
[11140.557325] usbcore: registered new interface driver dvb_usb_af9015
[11140.557753] usb 2-1.2: dvb_usb_v2: found a 'Genius TVGo DVB-T03' in cold state
[11140.557900] usb 2-1.2: dvb_usb_v2: Did not find the firmware file 'dvb-usb-af9015.fw'. Please see linux/Documentation/dvb/ for more details on firmware-problems. Status -2
[11140.557905] usb 2-1.2: dvb_usb_v2: 'Genius TVGo DVB-T03' error while loading driver (-2)

so searched a bit and found + downloaded rpm from: http://pkgs.org/fedora-centos-rhel-opensuse-mandriva/olea/dvb-usb-af9015-fw-4.95.0-1.noarch.rpm.html

Afterwards installed the downloaded firmware via:

sudo rpm -ivh dvb-usb-af9015-fw-4.95.0-1.noarch.rpm

And finally unplugged and plugged to usb again to see:

[11796.948500] usb 2-1.1: new high-speed USB device number 7 using ehci-pci
[11797.038703] usb 2-1.1: New USB device found, idVendor=0458, idProduct=4012
[11797.038714] usb 2-1.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[11797.038720] usb 2-1.1: Product: DVB-T 2
[11797.038725] usb 2-1.1: Manufacturer: Afatech
[11797.041521] usb 2-1.1: dvb_usb_v2: found a 'Genius TVGo DVB-T03' in cold state
[11797.042331] usb 2-1.1: dvb_usb_v2: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-af9015.fw'
[11797.119176] usb 2-1.1: dvb_usb_v2: found a 'Genius TVGo DVB-T03' in warm state
[11797.542424] usb 2-1.1: dvb_usb_v2: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer
[11797.542542] DVB: registering new adapter (Genius TVGo DVB-T03)
[11797.575204] i2c i2c-7: af9013: firmware version 4.95.0.0
[11797.578207] usb 2-1.1: DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Afatech AF9013)...
[11797.589973] tda18271 7-00c0: creating new instance
[11797.597341] TDA18271HD/C1 detected @ 7-00c0
[11797.802656] Registered IR keymap rc-empty
[11797.802848] input: Genius TVGo DVB-T03 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.1/rc/rc0/input12
[11797.803814] rc0: Genius TVGo DVB-T03 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1.1/rc/rc0
[11797.803825] usb 2-1.1: dvb_usb_v2: schedule remote query interval to 500 msecs
[11797.803832] usb 2-1.1: dvb_usb_v2: 'Genius TVGo DVB-T03' successfully initialized and connected

so firmware seems to work now.

Generating channels.conf

Following command did the job for me (as I’m located in Bayern):

scandvb /usr/share/dvb/dvb-t/de-Bayern  > channels.conf

Enjoying the broadcasts

There is no me-tv (that I’m used to it from Ubuntu world), still, there is a vlc, that does the job for me quite well. Just running:

vlc channels.conf

made it and I could watch the game!

Setting up Vagrant on Fedora 17

Vagrant claims it can help in setup of virtual environments and make it easy to setup new guests.

However, to play around with that, I need to have Vagrant itself installed.

As I'm on Fedora 17, I went for this guide going through:

• VirtualBox installation
• Vagrant installation and sample usage

VirtualBox installation

[FAILED] Plan A (installing the RPMFusion package)

This was supposed to be be easy.

• Searching for exact package name first

sudo yum list virtualbox

• Installing afterwards

sudo yum install VirtualBox

After the 1.st expected problem (as documented by site I followed):

VBoxManage --version
WARNING: The vboxdrv kernel module is not loaded. Either there is no module
         available for the current kernel (3.9.10-100.fc17.x86_64) or it failed to
         load. Reboot the computer or load the kernel module by executing

           '/etc/sysconfig/modules/VirtualBox.modules' (as root)

         You will not be able to start VMs until this problem is fixed.
4.2.12_RPMFusionr84980

I was not able to resolve it as suggested, with (as I faced other errors):

sudo /etc/sysconfig/modules/VirtualBox.modules
[sudo] password for pb: 
ERROR: Module vboxdrv not found.
ERROR: Module vboxnetflt not found.
ERROR: Module vboxnetadp not found.

OK, well, time to look elsewhere. I found problem similar to my at virtualbox forum, with the reference, that I should go for the official rather than rpmfusion version of the VirtualBox.

As suggested, I did the removal and installation using:

sudo yum remove VirtualBox

[OK] Plan B (installing the official VirtualBox package)

For this one I've found guide here and it worked smoothly. I've decided not to copy paste information present elsewhere I'm reffering to, so feel free to follow the steps and get back here when done. Except that I didn't follow all the steps, but rather once comming to originally failed step:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup                                                                                        
[sudo] password for pb: 
Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules                         [  OK  ]
Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules            [  OK  ]
Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS[  OK  ]
Starting VirtualBox kernel modules                         [  OK  ]

$ VBoxManage --version
4.2.16r86992

I was done with that (didn't go for separate VirtualBox user setup).

Vagrant installation and sample usage

Let me reffer to original steps I followed, as the rest went smoothly for me.

Afterwards I could establish ssh connection to guest, simply via:

vagrant ssh

Enjoy.

Making notify-send work on Fedora 17 + Xfce.

Q: Is not notify-send command working for you on Fedora 17 with Xfce?
A: You need to install required packages.

In my case:

sudo yum install xfce4-notifyd notification-daemon libnotify

did the job.

Where if you don't have xfce4-notifyd installed, command will execute without error, but no notification will be shown.

Now you can enjoy notifications like this one:

notify-send it\'s\ alive!

For inspirational sample messages, see: http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/12/ubuntu-notify-send/

fedora and freebsd kernel (hoax)

Have you already read the news related to Fedora on freebsd kernel plans for Fedora 19?

Well, that sounds like an ambitious goal. But who is spreading the news?
Some sources people usually trust:
- slashdot: http://slashdot.org/submission/2464323/fedora-proposal-to-support-freebsd-kernel-and-cinnamon-by-default as well as on
- phoronix: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTI4MzQ

But what is the source of this breathtaking decision? In both cases it's fedora wiki: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/FreeBSD_kernel_integration

And now the funny/real part.

Check the history of wikipage:
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Features/FreeBSD_kernel_integration&action=history
As it's obvious it's been clarified, it's just a joke.

But what is the root cause behind all this?


From now on for the czech speaking people only :)

Original idea: as a result of discussion/comments for the cinnamon coming to fedora news: http://www.abclinuxu.cz/zpravicky/cinnamon-jako-vychozi-rozhrani-ve-fedore-19#9

And the situation clarification is in comments under: http://www.abclinuxu.cz/zpravicky/freebsd-kernel-ve-fedore-19

It's really worth reading :) and enjoying the way how easy it can be to mislead people if you convince source they trust :)

My fedora java 7 update

Today I've migrated to java 7 (Oracle version), as our development environment has been "java 7 enabled".

The transition was "rather" smooth, I just had to follow following description: http://fedorasolved.org/Members/zcat/using-sun-java-instead-of-openjdk

When I mentioned "rather", it was not due to description present on the mentioned site :). After I rebooted I could not login to my xfce (or gnome,...), login screen was shown again even after correct password input.

The problem was caused by my laziness. I didn't really read what I copy/pasted :)

After switching to text mode (Ctrl+Alt+F<X>) I've observed some EOF reported problem right after login. And my bash didn't behave :) I had to provide full path when invoking commands.

When thinking of what I've changed, file: /etc/profile.d/sunjava.sh started to be suspicious, after opening it via:

/usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/vi /etc/profile.d/sunjava.sh

(yes, path didn't work for me somehow :)

my suspect changed to culprit when seeing the content:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/default
export PATH=\$JAVA_HOME/bin:\$PATH
EOF

after fixing it to:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/default
export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

and doing the reboot afterwards, via:

/usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/reboot

all started to work as expected.

So it seems trivial things might become challenges in my hands :)
Now I see why I became a programmer rather than a doctor :)