Usb Tv-Tuner and Debian 11

Here is a step by step guide on how I set up Hauppauge’s WinTV-SoloHD usb On Debian 11.

1. Identifying the firmware that the tuner needs. Do this after device is plugged in:

sudo dmesg

36.588466] si2168 9-0064: firmware: failed to load dvb-demod-si2168-b40-01.fw (-2)
[ 36.588471] firmware_class: See https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware for information about missing firmware
[ 36.588473] si2168 9-0064: Direct firmware load for dvb-demod-si2168-b40-01.fw failed with error -2
[ 36.588476] si2168 9-0064: firmware file ‘dvb-demod-si2168-b40-01.fw’ not found
[ 36.699450] si2157 10-0060: found a ‘Silicon Labs Si2157-A30 ROM 0x50’
[ 36.699468] si2157 10-0060: firmware: failed to load dvb-tuner-si2157-a30-01.fw (-2)
[ 36.699472] si2157 10-0060: Can’t continue without a firmware.

2. Locate suitable firmwares. Suitable ones were found from Elec Github.

Download:

https://github.com/OpenELEC/dvb-firmware/blob/master/firmware/dvb-demod-si2168-b40-01.fw


https://github.com/CoreELEC/dvb-firmware/blob/master/firmware/dvb-tuner-si2157-a30-01.fw

3. Copy firmwares to correct locations:

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Fixing error on Debian 11: No module named py_compile

The root cause of an error is: /usr/bin/python3.9: No module named py_compile.

This will prevent python3 packages from installing as the dpkg errors out during configuration.

A more complete error example, will look something like this:


Setting up python3.9-minimal (3.9.2-1) …
/usr/bin/python3.9: can’t open file ‘/usr/lib/python3.9/py_compile.py’: [Errno
2] No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing package python3.9-minimal (–configure):
installed python3.9-minimal package post-installation script subprocess return
ed error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
python3.9-minimal
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
…
/usr/bin/python3.9: No module named py_compile

Regardless of the package name, missing the py_compile will give plenty of issues. Here comes an easy fix.

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Fixing resolution issues on Debian 11: New Nvidia cards

After install, resolution might be off. Xrandr might so something like this:

xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 1024 x 768, current 1024 x 768, maximum 1024 x 768
default connected 1024×768+0+0 0mm x 0mm
1024×768 76.00*

Step 1: Grub resolution is wrong (optional)

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Automatically creating a user and forcing password change on first login: A Linux scripting example

Sometimes there might be a need to make a test user really fast. Reasons may vary and we might want to make this as easy as possible for ourselves. We are of course thinking about adding our test user to sudo/wheel group and we have a our default password at mind that we will set to our test user.

However, we might want to force user to change the password during first login and be certain that our poorly chosen default password will not stay universal on possibly critical systems. Later, we also might want to lock the user account and possibly even delete it when there is no need to test anymore. Here is how do all this with some good old scripting:

https://github.com/postman721/scripting-examples/blob/main/auto_creation.sh