[pvrusb2] New driver snapshot: pvrusb2-mci-20080831

[Mike Isely]

On Sat, 18 Oct 2008, Bjorn Danielsson wrote:

> Mike Isely <isely at isely.net> wrote:
> >[...]
> > You just need to build another computer to test against :-)
> >
> > That's actually how I do things here.  I have a "production" system 
> > running MythTV, but the testing is all done on a workstation which I can 
> > take down at any time without upsetting anything / anyone.  I actually 
> > do compilations on a laptop and then rsync the to-be-tested module(s) 
> > over to the test machine.  This is a nice strategy because it means I 
> > don't have to restart my entire dev environment every time I panic the 
> > test machine :-)
> 
> Mike, you mentioned a few years ago that you used vmware for some things,
> are you using any virtualization stuff today for your driver hacking?

I used vmware as a means to run the device inside Windows without having 
to run Windows on the bare metal.  This is in fact how I played around 
with the device when I first bought one back in August 2004.  I was 
blown away by the fact that I could get Hauppauge's TV app working 
inside of win2k in a guest OS hosted by Linux.

In the early stages of investigation - building upon what you had 
already done - I used the vmware guest OS as an easy way to do more USB 
snooping (all inside the guest with the usual tools, not using the host 
OS).  It was very handy because I found Hauppauge's driver to be, well, 
challenging at the time, requiring frequent reinstallation to clean up.  
But with vmware's journaled disks, all I had to do instead was roll back 
to the last good snapshot any time it failed again.

Later versions of vmware stopped working with the PVR-USB2 hardware and 
Hauppauge's driver.  I never figured out why, but it didn't matter so 
much by then.  The last couple of vmware versions have significantly 
improved USB support, so it's likely that this sort of technique would 
work again but I haven't tried it in a long while.


> 
> I started playing with qemu recently, mainly for work-related things
> that involve freebsd. I haven't tried it on my pvrusb2 box yet
> but I am tempted.

I'd be curious to know how well that works.  The key factor will 
of course be how well qemu handles USB support.


> 
> I can easily get addicted to the convenience of having boot screens
> in a vnc window instead of having to deal with a physical monitor.
> And I also like not having to worry about zapping the MBR or formatting
> the wrong partition during a test install...

Preaching to the choir :-)

  -Mike

-- 

Mike Isely
isely @ pobox (dot) com
PGP: 03 54 43 4D 75 E5 CC 92 71 16 01 E2 B5 F5 C1 E8