Terratec Cinergy T USB XS in My Ubuntu Installation

Last updated $Date: 2008-05-27 18:44:47 $

Martti Kupar inen <martti.kuparinen@iki .fi>

http://www.iki.fi/kuparine/comp/ubuntu/en/terratec.html

Abstract

This is how I installed and configured Terratec Cinergy T USB XS DVB-T receiver on my multimedia PC.

Terratec Cinergy T USB XS in My Ubuntu Installation

Please note that official linuxtv.org drivers do not have support for the Cinergy T USB XS at this time. If you go ahead and install the experimental driver described in this document, you will be unable to load the gspca module needed by many web cameras (see the gspca information page for devices supported by the gspca driver). An an example, I'm currently unable to use Logitech Communicate STX after installing the experimental DVB driver!

So my personal recommendation is to stay away from this device and buy instead something which works out-of-the-box with the official Linux drivers.

I also had some weird problems with Kaffeine (Can't tune DVB). Then someone suggested that some USB ports might not be able to provide enough current (mA) for the USB stick. I connected my Cinergy T USB XS to a USB hub instead of the backside of the PC and all problems were gone.

Hardware

lsusb
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0ccd:0043 TerraTec Electronic GmbH
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0419:0001 Samsung Info. Systems America, Inc. IrDA Remote Controller

Output from the lsusb -v command is here.

Preparations

Activate the universe repository in /etc/apt/sources.list and then install the latest updates before starting. Make sure you reboot if you are instructed to do so. 


sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude dist-upgrade

Installing the required software


sudo aptitude install mercurial build-essential linux-source linux-headers-generic

Fetching and updating the sources

In this example I used SRCDIR=${HOME} but you can select whatever directory you prefer. Leaving SRCDIR undefined is same as using ${HOME}. 

# Location of the sources
export SRCDIR=${HOME}

# Either check out a new copy
cd ${SRCDIR}
hg clone http://mcentral.de/hg/~mrec/v4l-dvb-experimental

# or update the existing copy
cd ${SRCDIR}
cd v4l-dvb-experimental
hg pull -u http://mcentral.de/hg/~mrec/v4l-dvb-experimental

Fetching the firmware


cd /tmp
wget http://konstantin.filtschew.de/v4l-firmware/firmware.tgz
sudo tar xzf firmware.tgz -C /lib/firmware

Building and installing the driver


cd ${SRCDIR}
cd v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l
make distclean
make KDIR=/lib/modules/`uname -r`/build
sudo make install

Modifying /etc/modules


sudo gedit /etc/modules

em28xx
em2880-dvb

sudo reboot

After reboot you should see the dvb directory and some device nodes in it. Make sure you are member of the video group or you will not be able to use the device driver. 

ls -l /dev/dvb/adapter0
total 0
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 4 2007-08-30 07:34 demux0
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 5 2007-08-30 07:34 dvr0
crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 3 2007-08-30 07:34 frontend0

References