Installation SkyStar II under Fedora Core 2

Introduction:
This may be helpfull especially to European/ German users. I know a lot having difficulties with this card

Prerequisites:
Fedora Core 2 with Kernels before 2.6.6-1.427 or after (including) 2.6.7-1.494.2.2.
Versions inbetween lack of DVB support (see Bugzilla: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=125911).

Please use the "root" account to work through the following steps.

To load the card drivers automatically insert the following lines into your "/etc/modprobe.conf" file:

alias skystar skystar2
alias frontend stv0299


Use “User and Groups” from the System settings menu of the Red Hat Menu, to create a group named “video”.
Add all users who should have access to the DVB-card to this group.

Currently Fedora Core 2 does not create the devices under /dev/dvb automatically. Thus execute the following ShellScript, 
which is part of the DVB Driver Package from http://www.linuxtv.org :

#!/bin/sh
# Create device nodes for the Linux DVB API with DVB_API_VERSION 2.
# The devices created are suitable for most current PC DVB cards,
# i.e. cards having one frontend, one demux and optionally one
# MPEG decoder.
# The script creates devices for four cards by default.

if [ -e /dev/.devfsd ]; then
echo "It seems you are using devfs. Good!"
exit 0
fi

# get rid of old DVB API devices; do it twice for good measure...
rm -rf /dev/ost
rm -rf /dev/ost
rm -rf /dev/dvb
rm -rf /dev/dvb

mkdir /dev/dvb
chmod 755 /dev/dvb

for i in `seq 0 3`; do
echo "Creating DVB devices in /dev/dvb/adapter$i"
mkdir /dev/dvb/adapter$i
chmod 755 /dev/dvb/adapter$i

# Changed device major number from 250 to 212
mknod -m 0660 /dev/dvb/adapter$i/video0 c 212 `expr 64 \* $i + 0`
mknod -m 0660 /dev/dvb/adapter$i/audio0 c 212 `expr 64 \* $i + 1`
mknod -m 0660 /dev/dvb/adapter$i/frontend0 c 212 `expr 64 \* $i + 3`
mknod -m 0660 /dev/dvb/adapter$i/demux0 c 212 `expr 64 \* $i + 4`
mknod -m 0660 /dev/dvb/adapter$i/dvr0 c 212 `expr 64 \* $i + 5`
mknod -m 0660 /dev/dvb/adapter$i/ca0 c 212 `expr 64 \* $i + 6`
mknod -m 0660 /dev/dvb/adapter$i/net0 c 212 `expr 64 \* $i + 7`
mknod -m 0660 /dev/dvb/adapter$i/osd0 c 212 `expr 64 \* $i + 8`
chown root.video /dev/dvb/adapter$i/*
done


Please note that the device major number has been changed from 250 to 212 (see: http://www.linuxtv.org/news/js/major.xml)

Use "User and Groups" from the System settings menu of the Red Hat Menu, to create a group named "video". 
Add all users who should have access to the DVB-card to this group.

Insert the following lines to /etc/rc.local

modprobe skystar and
modprobe frontend


The dmesg command should print the following lines:

drivers/media/dvb/b2c2/skystar2.c: FlexCopII(rev.130) chip found
drivers/media/dvb/b2c2/skystar2.c: the chip has 6 hardware filters
DVB: registering new adapter (Technisat SkyStar2 driver).
probe_tuner: try to attach to Technisat SkyStar2 driver
drivers/media/dvb/frontends/stv0299.c: setup for tuner Samsung TBMU24112IMB
DVB: registering frontend 0:0 (STV0299/TSA5059/SL1935 based)...


In the case that stv0299 could not bound, a different frontend will be needed.
Try using alias frontend mt312 in modprobe.conf instead.

Good luck Tom.