Hauppauge Roslyn Card

[tmiranda]

I bit the bullit and purchased a Sage Linux license so I could test the STVi's I've been developing to make sure they run under Linux. I setup a test machine with the latest Ubuntu and installed an old Hauppauge PVR-250 Roslyn card into the machine but it isn't working and I'm not sure why.

How can I tell if the device is installed and functioning? Sage sees two capture devices called video0 and video1. When I configure them in Sage all I get is a blue screen. How do I tell what physical devices video0 and video1 are connected to? I don't think it's the Roslyn card since that is a single tuner device.

What's the Ubuntu equivalent of the "Device Manager" under Windows?

I'll try hunting down a device driver for the card this weekend. Assuming I find one is installing it as easy as double clicking on it (assuming it's a .deb package)?

Installing Ubuntu and Sage was suprisingly easy but I did notice two quirks which may or may not be normal.

First I can't change the default directories for recordings, photos or music. I can't even edit the disk usage rules. Not a big deal since this is a test machine but I was wondering if that is normal?

Second, after the initial install I kept getting all sorts of errors due to permission issues. I fixed this by setting all permissions in the /opt directory tree to 777. This is probably not a smart thing to do but I'm not too worried since it is only a test machine. Am I asking for trouble? What should the permissions be and should I be running Sage as root or as a user?

I was a Unix device driver programmer almost 30 years ago and forgot most of what I knew so I now know just enough to be dangerous. I know nothing about all of the fancy GUIs that have been added so be gentile.

[stuckless]

there is probably a gui way... but i would just log into a shell (gnome-terminal) and type the following command...

# dmesg | grep video

That will probably show you what is connected to video0 and video1... btw... there are ways to force a devide to use a particular videoN device, but you may not care too much if you are just doing this for testing.

[tmiranda]

That worked! The Roslyn was video1 and it is all working now. Thanks stuckless.

[davephan]

Tmiranda,

Let us know your opinions of the Linux version compared to Windows. There are probably a lot of people who are curious how they compare, especially with reliability and response speed. I haven't tried the Linux version because there isn't a trial version.

Could you also try imaging the system with PING, Partition Image is Not Ghost? PING is supposed to work to image and recover Linux as well as Windows, and it is free. If you have an extra hard drive, you could apply the restoration to another hard drive, so you would not loose anything if it did not work with Linux.

Dave

[tmiranda]

Dave,

I'm only using Linux as a test system so I do not think I'd be able to give a reliable comparison. My initial impressions are that it's almost exactly the same, which is a good thing

As others have said, I would not recommend switching to Linux because it's somehow perceived as better, faster, or more stable. If your Windows rig is stable and you're familiar with Windows and not Linux, keep what ya got.

If you like Linux and/or are having trouble with the Windows version go for it. Make sure your hardware (capture cards) are supported.

Tom

[JetreL]

I recently took the plunge to from Windows to Linux. I agree with the comparison between the Linux and Windows version. Though I think Windows is easier to install and get running. I think Linux is easier to get to a stable point.

If you are looking for something that lists out your hardware you can always use the following commands"

lshw - Hardware Lister (lshw)
lspci - List info on pci devices
lsusb - List USB devices
lspcmcia - List pcmcia devices
lsof - Lists info on Linux open files

They can be really helpful in troubleshooting HW issues