Ok, I am about to rant a little. I hate modules! Or maybe it is just the modules on my machine.

I recently installed Debian Unstable onto my machine. I used the stock 2.6 kernel, and the only thing I needed to do to get my USB TV adaptor to work was to copy the firmware file to the correct location.

That got me up and running with xine. Now, today I wanted to use dvbstream to record the GP. It failed. I remembered reading on Hugo’s website (www.carfax.org.uk) about adding an option to one of the dvb modules that stopped it from being automatically unloaded, or something. I found the details quite easily, but then I need to find exactly where to stick this information. It was by now about five minutes to go before the start of the GP.

It would appear that Debian is in the process of upgrading how modules are configured as there seems to be two places holding configuration files. Frankly, I don’t care how they are handled, as long as it works. With minutes to go, I was not in the mood to learn. Naturally, with sods law in motion, the first place I tried failed to work. I finally managed to get it to work by adding a file called dvb in /etc/modprobe.d. The file contained the single line

options dvb_core dvb_shutdown_timeout=0

I hope I remember this for the next time I re-install!