NextPVR oddly limited to 7 tuners

[DaVinylSmith]

Hello All, bear with me if I miss anything as forum posting is relatively new to me

I think I came across an odd bug running NextPVR on Debian. Since we have been hitting limits on available tuners recently I decided to pick up a second tuner card for our server. However, I can only get 7 tuners functional. As soon as I try to utilize tuner number 8, things start getting weird.

Troubleshooting around, I have come across a couple things:
1. the issue does not seem to be hardware specific. My original attempt was with two Hauppauge WinTV-quadHD tuners (one PCIe & one USB). Thinking it was a weird issue with different tuner chipsets, i bought a second PCIe card and the issue persists
2. trying to load a channel that utilizes tuner 8, it sits there trying to start the stream, but ends up failing with a 'transcoder exited' error
3. Here's where it gets weirder. If tuner #1 is being used (usually when something is recording) I get 'No tuner was available for the requested channel' and 'ERROR    Device or resource busy while opening /dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' even though the tuner should be adapter7/frontend0
4. Even though I am unable to watch any channels on tuner 8, I can still scan for channels just fine (i was unable to confirm if this was actually using a different tuner to scan)

I have also attached the logs as requested in the wiki. A quick look at the end of device-adapter0.log shows the most recent attempt of the tuner trying and failing. I do not see a log file for adapter7


I am genuinely curious if anyone else is having the same issue I am as it's odd but seems to be easily reproducible from my end.


Chris

[mvallevand]

What shows with find /dev/dvb I don't see tuner 3 or 8 being used

Also in /var/opt/nextpvr what conf files do you see?

There are many post about issues with the quad on the Hauppauge github I'd start there https://github.com/b-rad-NDi/Ubuntu-medi...der/issues

Martin

[DaVinylSmith]

Okay, so after some more troubleshooting, here's what I got.


I did end up coming across a firmware file not loading in the form of a supposedly dead tuner (adapter2) but this was a red herring. After fixing this, the boot errors went away and the tuner came back.

I ended up using 8 separate instances of VLC to try and force select which adapters were active and I managed to get all 8 up and running simultaneously (with my server crying for help from all the video streams). I then ended up dropping each tuner out and starting a channel stream through NextPVR. Each one worked right up until adapter7.

Attached are new logs since I went through each tuner along with the find output showing all 8 with matching names. I still couldn't get adapter7 functional, and I even found out that channel scanning occurs on adapter0 as well (scanning on adapter7 would immediately fail if adapter0 was being used). Also while scanning is taking place on adapter7, VLC errors out when trying to activate adapter0.

Curiouser & curiouser...

Honestly, I'm just happy none of my tuners were dead. Those things are expensive!


Chris

EDIT: due to attachment limitations, find output is below

/dev/dvb
/dev/dvb/adapter7
/dev/dvb/adapter7/net0
/dev/dvb/adapter7/dvr0
/dev/dvb/adapter7/demux0
/dev/dvb/adapter7/frontend0
/dev/dvb/adapter6
/dev/dvb/adapter6/net0
/dev/dvb/adapter6/dvr0
/dev/dvb/adapter6/demux0                                     
/dev/dvb/adapter6/frontend0                                         
/dev/dvb/adapter5                                                   
/dev/dvb/adapter5/net0                                                     
/dev/dvb/adapter5/dvr0                                                           
/dev/dvb/adapter5/demux0                                                                     
/dev/dvb/adapter5/frontend0                                                                 
/dev/dvb/adapter4                                                                           
/dev/dvb/adapter4/net0                                                                                       
/dev/dvb/adapter4/dvr0                                                                                       
/dev/dvb/adapter4/demux0                                                                                     
/dev/dvb/adapter4/frontend0                                                                                   
/dev/dvb/adapter3                                                                                                 
/dev/dvb/adapter3/net0                                                                                             
/dev/dvb/adapter3/dvr0                                                                                             
/dev/dvb/adapter3/demux0                                                                                             
/dev/dvb/adapter3/frontend0                                                                                         
/dev/dvb/adapter2                                                                                                       
/dev/dvb/adapter2/net0                                                                                                   
/dev/dvb/adapter2/dvr0                                                                                                           
/dev/dvb/adapter2/demux0                                                                                                         
/dev/dvb/adapter2/frontend0                                                                                                     
/dev/dvb/adapter1                                                                                                                         
/dev/dvb/adapter1/net0                                                                                                                   
/dev/dvb/adapter1/dvr0                                                                                                                   
/dev/dvb/adapter1/demux0                                                                                                                       
/dev/dvb/adapter1/frontend0                                                                                                                     
/dev/dvb/adapter0
/dev/dvb/adapter0/net0
/dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0
/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0
/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0

[mvallevand]

It doesn't look like tuner 7 has been scanned. Are there channels on it and there a conf file for it.

You can use dvbv5-zap to monitor frequencies without writing any data.

Martin

[DaVinylSmith]

attached are all 8 adapter configs. Since they are all on the same antenna, they get the same results.

It seems like no matter what I try, I can't get adapter7 to output a log, only adapter0-adapter6.

I found a way to get files off the server easier, so let me know if you need to see anything else


Chris