Upgrading. Is it safe yet? (ALL video cards but nVidia GTxxx cards specifically)

[l3mce]

*edit- looks like the answer is no for right now.

I broke the heck out of avwizard a week or so back. Specifically the audio configuration scripts were crashing it. I am sorry for the frustration this caused, but I was trying to get all of the new generation of nvidia cards to work correctly out of the box.

I believe I have now achieved this, based on the few tests I have been able to perform. If you have an nVidia GT xxx card or ion 2 (which is a GT 218 I believe)... you SHOULD have a working config that will play audio in AVWizard and MDs now over HDMI. Feedback would be greatly appreciated. All other cards SHOULD be unbroken now as well. So just update and upgrade... run AVWizard and report back whether success or fail.

Please give me the output of lspci -nnk | grep VGA -A3     in either case

IF there is a problem, please paste your /etc/asound.conf file
IF there is a problem, please paste the output of sudo aplay -l

If you have oddball sizing issues in AVWizard that are NOT resolved through selection, please paste your current xorg.conf. Removing /etc/X11/xorg.conf and /etc/X11/xorg.conf.pluto.avwizard and rebooting WILL resolve it. I am trying not to do that automatically for people with custom xorgs.

There is a new snapshot cooking as we speak as well. This new snapshot SHOULD be our best yet, including a working live boot.

[davegravy]

02:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation G86 [GeForce 8500 GT] [10de:0421] (rev a1)
        Kernel driver in use: nvidia
        Kernel modules: nvidia-glx-260, nvidiafb, nouveau
04:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394) [0c00]: JMicron Technology Corp. IEEE 1394 Host Controller [197b:2380]

- So far no particulating or random video freezes... keeping an eye on it.
- No sound in some .mkvs.

[Marie.O]

If sound is missing on some files, I doubt that it is a matter of the install procedure or the card. My money would be on a missing codecs in the media players we use.

[bushtech]

Sound not working on Zbox ID41




lspci -nnk | grep VGA -A3
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GT218 [ION] [10de:0a64] (rev a2)
        Kernel driver in use: nvidia
        Kernel modules: nvidia-glx-260, nvidiafb, nouveau
03:00.1 Audio device [0403]: NVIDIA Corporation High Definition Audio Controller [10de:0be3] (rev a1)

 File: asound.conf

pcm_slave.convert {
        @args [ RATE CARD DEV ]
        @args.RATE {
                type integer
        }
        @args.CARD {
                type string
        }
        @args.DEV {
                type integer
                default 0
        }
        pcm {
                @func concat
                strings [ $CARD "," $DEV ]
        }
        rate $RATE
}

pcm.spdif_playback {
        type plug
        slave {
                @func concat
                strings [ "convert:RATE=48000,CARD=spdif:1" ]
        }
}

pcm.hdmi_playback {
        type plug
        slave {
                @func concat
                strings [ "convert:RATE=48000,CARD=hdmi:1" ]
        }
}

pcm.asym_spdif {
        type asym
        playback.pcm "spdif_playback"
        capture.pcm "plughw:1"
}

pcm.asym_hdmi {
        type asym
        playback.pcm "hdmi_playback"
        capture.pcm "plughw:1"
}

pcm.asym_analog {
        type asym
        playback.pcm "plug:dmix:1"
        capture.pcm "plughw:1"
}
pcm.!default asym_hdmi

sudo aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: HDA Generic [HDA Generic]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

[l3mce]

Thank you bushtech.

The problem with bushtech's md creation and upgrade was that his diskless image was very old, so the addition of the backport install did not exist when the nvidia driver was installed, and once he upgraded and rebooted, on boot it saw the correct nvidia driver was installed, so it did not check the backports, assuming it was already done. I have changed the detection routine to check this regardless of the state of the video driver. It will be built later today or tomorrow.

So... for people upgrading

Delete/rebuild your MD image.
After first boot (which will install the correct driver depending on the age of your system), update and upgrade the MD, and reboot.
If your tv does not like the output (only some tvs), rm /etc/X11/xorg.con* and reboot.

Alternatively, you can upgrade your core, and run /usr/pluto/bin/Diskless_CreateTBZ.sh.
Then create/rebuild your md and everything should work.


This only affects upgrades, and only affects the GT xxx series nvidia. Existing snapshot will work fine regardless.

Thanks bushtech!

[l3mce]

And Intel is working correctly again. Yay.

[bushtech]

Thanks L3mce!

Aplay now:

 aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC892 Analog [ALC892 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC892 Digital [ALC892 Digital]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Interesting that the nvidia card is not card 0 now

[l3mce]

The reason it WAS card 0 was due to us hacking the alsa-base.conf because I could not make anything work on card 1.

Thanks to Uplink for adding that "card selection" code to avwizard on step 5.

[ardirtbiker]

l3mce,
     I'm going to rebuild my MD (with the GeForce GTX 550 Ti) this weekend and see if ithe fixes work for me.

Dennis

[l3mce]

Well... we should talk about that...

I dunno about that guy. What should be done is, as we have done in the past, drop video driver from 295 to 260, and add it to alsa-backports, and try that route first. That is what I would hope works best, and is the easiest to deal with.

In your situation, I would fully upgrade the core, and create a new diskless image, running the TBZ script. I would add the MD, and then catch it when it tries to reboot. Just unplug it or whatever. That is very important, and boring... waiting for it to reboot itself. It really can't get past the post screen when rebooting or it can sort of screw up the experiment. Then navigate to the /usr/pluto/diskless/**/usr/pluto/bin/nvidia-install.sh file to make these changes... then boot.

It would be very cool if that worked. If it did not, then simply delete the MD and plug it in and let it auto-do.

Really appreciate your patience with that very frustrating card. If NEITHER of those work, I will try and put something together that upgrades your kernel as well, however I have found nothing from nvidia which says it wont work on our kernel.

[ardirtbiker]

l3mce...   it is a rainy day here... too muddy to do any work outside... so I got some time.

can you post what I need to 'modify' in nvidia-install.sh? 

I can tell you that with the stock kernel,  alsa does not even see the HDMI audio stuff... even if I install the backports-modules-alsa for the kernel.

I do know that once a 2.6.35 or greater kernel is installed, the audio hardware is seen by alsa.


So... Ive already upgraded today.  Ive rerun Diskless_CreateTBZ.sh... and am standing-by for further instructions!!!!


Dennis

[JaseP]

Does Intel require us to rebuild MD images on upgrade, or is that only the nVidia GTs???...

Thanks.

[l3mce]

In nvidia-install.sh

1. Get your pciid
lspci -nn | grep -w 'VGA' | sed 's/.*://;s/\].*//'

2. Make sure your pciid is NOT in "DRIVER_295_SUPPORTED" but instead in, "DRIVER_260_SUPPORTED"

3. Make sure your pciid IS in "Backports_Required"

That is really it for that. You might also add: checkAlsaBackportNeeds       to line 668 of Utils.sh under the function CheckVideoDriver()
so it looks like:

Code: [Select]

if [[ "$prop_driver" == "$cur_driver" ]] && [[ "$cur_driver" == "nvidia" ]] && [[ -n "$online" ]]; then
StartService "Checking nVidia driver" ". /usr/pluto/bin/nvidia-install.sh"
checkAlsaBackportNeeds
current_nvidia=$(getInstalledNvidiaDriver)
preferred_nvidia=$(getPreferredNvidiaDriver)
if [[ "$current_nvidia" != "$preferred_nvidia" ]]; then
cur_driver="wrongnv"
online_mismatch="true"
fi
fi
This would be the place to begin.


JaseP
You need to get the new code to a new MD. You can either upgrade the core and run Diskless_CreateTBZ.sh and create the new MD... or you can create the MD, watch it fail... upgrade it... and rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf*  then reboot. If you have an existing broken MD... you can just do the upgrade and xorg.conf cleanse.

Either way.

[JaseP]

Well,...

Here's something that's gonna toss yer noodle around,... (Keep in mind, this is a net installed 1004 that I just ran the upgrade on, don't know if that matters)...  I made the bone headed move of not only deleting my MDs (decided rebuilding was easier), nothing to report on that yet,... But, I also (here's the bone headed part) deleted my xorg.conf from the Core thinking it'd automatically dump me into the AVwizard to reset the Core's xorg.conf (old xorg.conf renamed to xorg.oldone and left in the directory),... That didn't happen... in the least.

Here's the thing,... The Core/Hybrid booted graphically,... UI2 and all,... There's NO xorg.conf in the /etc/X11 directory, just the xorg.oldone,... and the typical Kubuntu auto Xsession crapolla you get from a standard Kubuntu 10.04 install...

But so far, everything appears to work... MythTV,... Live TV playback,... KDE desktop, etc., etc...

Let me know if there's something I should try to run to see if running it this way breaks anything... But for now,... I'm just going to keep running it this way,... rebuild my MDs, and see if it affects anything...

Oh,... Forgot to mention, Intel chipsets on everything.

[l3mce]

I don't know why upgrades do not work the same as fresh installs. Net/dvd... its just... I dunno. I am just trying to work it out now. Intel, due to the way it deals without abstraction is much more well behaved than the others, and orbiter just reads/does what the database tells it to do. You might find some quirks... but I would expect it to work for the most part.

Now... why avwizard isnt running... thats... a bit strange.

I would try and login with sudo -i, then run /etc/init.d/a0start_avwizard from command line. If that doesn't kickstart it, bash -x /etc/init.d/a0start_avwizard  and see what it actually does.

Then try
. /usr/pluto/bin/Utils.sh; CheckVideoDriver

and see what that does. AVWizard SHOULD run. If avwiz is crashing... then get me a log explaining why (/var/log/pluto/AVWizard_Run*datetime*.log) or maybe /var/log/Xorg.0.log.