Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Sat, 3 Dec 2011 12:48:13 -0500 | | Subject | Re: [RFC] vtunerc: virtual DVB device - is it ok to NACK driver because of worrying about possible misusage? | | From | Devin Heitmueller <> |
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On Sat, Dec 3, 2011 at 12:42 PM, Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote: > On Sat, 3 Dec 2011 09:21:23 -0800 > VDR User <user.vdr@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Sat, Dec 3, 2011 at 8:13 AM, Andreas Oberritter <obi@linuxtv.org> wrote: >> > You could certainly build a library to reach a different goal. The goal >> > of vtuner is to access remote tuners with any existing program >> > implementing the DVB API. >> >> So you could finally use VDR as a server/client setup using vtuner, >> right? With full OSD, timer, etc? Yes, I'm aware that streamdev >> exists. It was horrible when I tried it last (a long time ago) and I >> understand it's gotten better. But it's not a suitable replacement for >> a real server/client setup. It sounds like using vtuner, this would >> finally be possible and since Klaus has no intention of ever >> modernizing VDR into server/client (that I'm aware of), it's also the >> only suitable option as well. > > I would expect it to still suck. One of the problems you have with trying > to pretend things are not networked is that you fake asynchronous events > synchronously, you can't properly cover error cases and as a result you > get things like ioctls that hang for two minutes or fail in bogus and > bizarre ways. If you loop via userspace you've also got to deal with > deadlocks and all sorts of horrible cornercases like the user space > daemon dying. > > There is a reason properly working client/server code looks different - > it's not a trivial transformation and faking it kernel side won't be any > better than faking it in user space - it may well even be a worse fake. > > Alan
This whole notion of creating fake kernel devices to represent networked tuners feels like a hack. If applications want to access networked tuners, adding support for RTP/RTSP or incorporating libhdhomerun (LGPL) is a fairly straightforward exercise. In fact, many applications already have incorporated support for one of these two approaches. The fact that app maintainers have been unwilling/uninterested to do such doesn't feel like it should be an excuse for hacking this functionality into the kernel.
Devin
-- Devin J. Heitmueller - Kernel Labs http://www.kernellabs.com
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