hamlet1601

Hi all, I'm running DietPi on an Orange Pi Zero 3 (H618, sunxi64), which repackages the Armbian current-sunxi64 kernel. I use a USB DVB-T2 dongle (HanfTek Astrometa RTL2832P, VID/PID 15f4:0131) with tvheadend for over-the-air TV. After a routine update the dongle stopped working entirely, and I tracked the root cause down to missing kernel modules. ## Problem Starting from kernel 6.18.x (package linux-image-current-sunxi64 version 26.05.0-trunk-dietpi1 and all subsequent builds through dietpi5), the following modules are absent from the kernel package: - dvb_usb_v2 - dvb-usb-rtl28xxu - dvb_core The USB device is correctly detected at bus level (lsusb, dmesg) but no driver ever binds to it and /dev/dvb is never created. lsmod | grep dvb returns nothing, and find /lib/modules/$(uname -r) -iname "*dvb*" only shows RC keymap files (e.g. rc-dvbsky.ko.xz), not the actual DVB subsystem drivers. lsusb output: Bus 004 Device 003: ID 15f4:0131 HanfTek Astrometa DVB-T/T2/C FM & DAB receiver [RTL2832P] dmesg shows the device is enumerated but no driver binds: usb 4-1: New USB device found, idVendor=15f4, idProduct=0131, bcdDevice= 1.00 usb 4-1: Product: dvbt2 usb 4-1: Manufacturer: astrometadvbt2 (no further DVB-related messages) ## Verified affected range I downloaded and inspected each linux-image-current-sunxi64 .deb from the DietPi apt repo without installing them, extracted with dpkg-deb -x, and searched for dvb_usb_v2.ko / dvb-usb-rtl28xxu.ko inside lib/modules/*/kernel/drivers/media/usb/dvb-usb-v2/. Results: 26.05.0-trunk-dietpi1 through dietpi5 (kernel 6.18.x) → DVB modules ABSENT 26.02.0-trunk-dietpi8 (kernel 6.12.76) → DVB modules PRESENT 26.02.0-trunk-dietpi1 through dietpi7 (kernel 6.12.58–6.12.74) → PRESENT 25.11.0-trunk-dietpi1 through dietpi3 (kernel 6.12.43–6.12.57) → PRESENT The regression is introduced exactly at the 26.02→26.05 branch transition (kernel 6.12→6.18). ## Kernel config comparison (confirmed) In kernel 6.12.76 (/boot/config-6.12.76-current-sunxi64), the full DVB-USB subsystem is present and compiled as modules, including: CONFIG_DVB_CORE=m CONFIG_DVB_USB_V2=m CONFIG_DVB_USB_RTL28XXU=m CONFIG_DVB_USB=m (plus ~40 additional DVB USB driver modules) In kernel 6.18.29 (extracted from linux-image-current-sunxi64_26.05.0-trunk-dietpi5_arm64.deb), grep for DVB_USB and DVB_CORE returns NO output at all — the options are not present in the config file, not even as "# CONFIG_DVB_USB_V2 is not set". This confirms the entire DVB-USB subsystem was dropped from the sunxi64-current kernel config when the 6.18.x branch was opened, not selectively disabled. ## Hardware Board: Orange Pi Zero 3 (Allwinner H618, sun50i-h618) Dongle: HanfTek Astrometa DVB-T/T2/C FM & DAB receiver [RTL2832P] VID/PID 15f4:0131 Kernel broken: 6.18.29-current-sunxi64 GCC 13.3.0 (aarch64-linux-gnu), build date 2026-03-05 Kernel working: 6.12.76-current-sunxi64 USB device descriptor (from lsusb -v): idVendor 0x15f4 HanfTek idProduct 0x0131 Astrometa DVB-T/T2/C FM & DAB receiver [RTL2832P] bcdDevice 1.00 iManufacturer 1 astrometadvbt2 iProduct 2 dvbt2 bNumConfigurations 1 bNumInterfaces 2 MaxPower 500mA ## Workaround Downgrading to linux-image-current-sunxi64=26.02.0-trunk-dietpi8 restores DVB support. Package pinned with apt-mark hold to prevent auto-upgrade. Note: the downgrade via apt-get install --allow-downgrades correctly swapped the kernel image and initrd, but did NOT regenerate the /boot/dtb-<version>/ directory nor update the /boot/dtb symlink — it was left pointing to the now-removed newer kernel's dtb directory, causing a boot failure. The dtb files had to be manually copied from /usr/lib/linux-image-6.12.76-current-sunxi64/allwinner/ and the symlink fixed by hand. This may be worth a separate look at the postinst/postrm scripts for the kernel downgrade case on sunxi64. ## Requested fix Please re-enable CONFIG_DVB_USB_V2=m, CONFIG_DVB_USB_RTL28XXU=m, CONFIG_DVB_CORE=m and their dependencies in linux-sunxi64-current.config for the 6.18.x branch. These were present throughout the entire 6.12.x series and there is no apparent reason to drop them. Thanks for the great work on Armbian!