lirc_imon support broken in ubuntu package (already fixed upstream)

[Ryan Gardner]

Binary package hint: lirc

The support of lcd and vfd devices was recently fixed in the cvs head of lirc (it's not fixed in the 0.8.4 release - but in the commit as of oct 14, 2008 it is fixed in the cvs)

Among other things, the LCD device support would not work in the versions currently shipped in ubuntu because of an inverted series of magic numbers, and an improper reassigning of a file write operation that prints to the display.

A lot of time went into do debugging and troubleshooting this, and the lirc upstream was very quick to fix it once it was pointed out.

It would be VERY nice if ubuntu could base the intrepid package on 0.8.4 and include the fixes to the imon_lcd in the intrepid release - particularly in light of the increasing popularity of the imon LCD panels in HTPC cases and the popularity of Mythbuntu for building HTPC's - the new head version will "just work" and will no longer require such configuration options as "is_lcd=" in order to work for each device.

If you need me to build a patch to backport the changes to the lirc ubuntu package - let me know and I will do so for you.

[darylb (darylblanc)]

Piggy-backing on this bug because this is basically a request to uprev ubuntu's lirc package, which would fix my issue too.
Support for the IRman receiver device is also broken in the version in Intrepid (currently 0.8.3-0ubuntu2). According to http://lirc.org/ IRman support fixed in 0.8.4. An upgrade to a newer version would help IRman users out too.

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

If you can link to the appropriate commits or attach them as patches that would help as I'm not sure particularly which commits you need. I'm packaging 0.8.4a right now.

[sgtrock (jps-sgtrock)]

0.8.4a is not working for me for an iMON LCD display. lsusb reports the IR receiver correctly as 0x15c2:0x0038. However, there is no driver assigned. Also, I don't have any devices created in /dev except for /dev/lircd. Twice I've found references by people who have solved the problem, but they didn't post what they did. :(

Nothing jumps out at me from either dmesg or messages. However, if you think they might be useful I can supply what looks like the relevant sections.

[trontos (dougsouth)]

sgtrock, for what it is worth, I'm attaching my configuration file I'm using for the lirc 0.8.4 (I think, was several months ago and I'm not sure exactly what I did).

The problem with the hard configuration is that it didn't seem to allow you to have more than one daemon per device (or something similar?!?). Anyway, this config helped me to get around it. Hope it helps.

[Matt Price (matt-price)]

I'm having a similar problem, also following this post on the forums:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6818168
but not having much luck. my experience is just as described by sgtrock; tried trontos's lirc/hardware.conf, but didn't work for me.

matt

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package lirc - 0.8.5-0ubuntu1

---------------
lirc (0.8.5-0ubuntu1) karmic; urgency=low

  * New upstream version. (LP: #383446)
    - Fixes imon support (LP: #283317)
  * Refresh the following patches for new version:
    - debian/patches/04_man_pages
    - debian/patches/13-warning-cleanup
    - debian/patches/21_atiusb
    - debian/patches/23_pad2keys
    - debian/patches/28_irrecord_resume_support
    - debian/patches/35_general_deviniput
  * debian/control:
    - Add build-depends on libftdi-dev to prevent FTBFS.
  * debian/copyright:
    - Update to what debian is shipping.
  * debian/modules-source/{lirc-modules-source.conf, Makefile}
    - Don't build cmdir anymore. It's now a userspace module
  * debian/rules:
    - Generate dkms.conf using sed instead.
  * debian/patches/12_pvr150_transmit_support:
    - Drop. Upstream didn't like this patch due to questionable
     copyright, and we aren't properly supporting it anyway.
    - Refresh 20_serial_igor
    - Refresh 26_transmitter_lircd
  * debian/lirc-modules-source.README.Debian:
    - Drop, inaccurate now.
  * debian/lirc.init.d:
    - Cleanup a useless for loop.

 -- Mario Limonciello <email address hidden> Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:48:20 -0500

[JohnnyJboss (johnnyjboss)]

I had all kinds of problems with the 0.8.5 and 0.8.6 lirc packages in mythbuntu releases because of dated (less than 1 year old in some cases) walk throughs on this module.

The best thing I can suggest is using the command 'modinfo lirc_imon' to get your module to tell you it's configuration settings.

is_lcd became displaytype and there's several options. Setting it wrong will cause the 'invalid payload' messages to flood your kern.log.