Firmware (or lack thereof) causes crashes in Fedora 17 and Rawhide

[dcharlespyle]

I am having a problem with a firmware package in Fedora 17, which also affects Rawhide. I have been unable to solve the problem.

I have a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 tuner/video capture card, model 74041 LF rev. C6B2.

I had no problems with it in Fedora 14, Fedora 15 or Fedora 16.

If I install "firmware for Conexant cx23418-based video capture devices" package (cx18-firmware-20080628-5) I end up with Cheese failing to launch and slamming hard drive, running CPU cores at 100%, and filling memory to capacity until killed by the system, as well as User Accounts in System Settings doing the same thing as Cheese.

If I do not have the firmware in the /usr/lib/firmware directory both Cheese and User Accounts works without crashing but then gnome-settings-daemon continually crashes with alternate signal 6 and signal 11 errors and I cannot run Cinnamon for more than a few seconds before I get the "Oops!" screen that forces me to logoff.

This is a fresh install of Fedora 17 with no proprietary software installed, and updated to the latest updates available in the repositories. I have tried differing versions of the firmware but this makes no difference.

Any suggestions besides replacing the card? The card is working fine in other operating systems I have tried it in.

[tbelvin]

Do you have nvidia graphics card? There seems to be a common bug with a workaround.
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_HVR-1600#Installation_Guide

Another bug on 32bit systems, also with a workaround:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_HVR-1600#Driver_refuses_to_load_with_mysterious_errors

[dcharlespyle]

tbelvin,

No, I do not have an nVidia card (I use ATi), although I did try that workaround anyway just to see if it would help. It didn't.

I also do not have a 32-bit system. I am, for the moment, pretty much straight x86_64. I wish that one had worked, too. The driver loads without problem, with or without the firmware.

It is the other side effects that occur with or without that are the problem. I just wish I could pinpoint the exact cause that only occurs in Fedora 17 and Rawhide.

[dcharlespyle]

After working a few days with the able assistance of Hans de Goede, I am happy to report that the abovementioned problem is now solved and fixed in both Fedora 17 and Fedora 18 rawhide.

Get the updated Cheese, cheese-libs and other files over at http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=4985 if you are affected by the above problem. Or, wait until it gets into the updates repositories. Or, just update to the latest and greatest for the sake of updating. :D

Note: For whatever reason, this work also fixed the crash problem occurring with User Accounts in System Settings. No more hard crashes in Cheese or User Accounts! :dance: