Support TV - Proposal for F9 - enhanced DVB capabilities

[David Timms]

Bill Nottingham wrote:
> David Timms (dtimms at iinet.net.au) said: 
>> 1. auto detect / load of drivers:
>> I would be great if the bootup process would detect that the user has a dvb 
>> tuner card and load the driver(s) without intervention {even once}.
>>
>> Currently I can # modprobe dvb_bt8xx   to get the kernel driver loaded.
>> This can be manually inserted into /etc/modprobe.conf , but with the 
>> hal/udev packages, I assume it is possible for the detection of the card on 
>> the pci bus during bootup to be the trigger to cause the module to be 
>> loaded.
> 
> Assuming the driver is correctly written, it should happen automatically.
> Failure to automatically load for any PCI/USB device is a driver bug.

Bill: After trying to sort through udev|hal to undestand what should or 
could happen, I noticed your reply; since it is a PCI device then it 
should just work already.

Certainly, the /dev/ nodes seem to be created according to the default 
udev rules, but only on manual driver modprobe.

Looking further I notice that > modinfo dvb_bt8xx lists:
filename: 
/lib/modules/2.6.23.1-21.fc7/kernel/drivers/media/dvb/bt8xx/dvb-bt8xx.ko
license:        GPL
author:         Florian Schirmer <jolt at tuxbox.org>
description:    Bt8xx based DVB adapter driver
depends:        bttv,bt878,i2c-core,dvb-core
vermagic:       2.6.23.1-21.fc7 SMP mod_unload 686 4KSTACKS
parm:           debug:Turn on/off debugging (default:off). (int)

Whereas for a network driver > modinfo tulip:
filename: 
/lib/modules/2.6.23.1-21.fc7/kernel/drivers/net/tulip/tulip.ko
version:        1.1.15
license:        GPL
description:    Digital 21*4* Tulip ethernet driver
author:         The Linux Kernel Team
srcversion:     54B741F794FD4612A7C5AFD
alias:          pci:v00001414d00000002sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v000014EAd0000AB08sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v000010B7d00009300sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v000017B3d0000AB08sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v00001737d0000AB08sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
...

Is it simply that these alias definitions need to be added to the 
driver; I might be able to do that myself ?

And that whenever newer boards are released using chip X that the driver 
for that chip needs to have a new alias added ?

Or is this issue more complex - and hence best to bugzilla it ? {where ?}

Is there other reasons that may have caused the driver author to not try 
to autoload - eg timing or ordering issues ?

DaveT.