LIRC in the 2.6.36 linux kernel

I've just upgraded to the 2.6.36 kernel and have found that lirc stopped working. lircd would load with the lirc-0.8.6 lirc_dev and lirc_sir modules in my kernel, but when irexec starts I'd get the following type of kernel oops.

BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at 0000005c
IP: [] lirc_get_pdata+0x2e9/0x841 [lirc_dev]
*pde = 00000000 
Oops: 0000 [#6] 
last sysfs file: /sys/devices/virtual/block/md3/dev
Modules linked in: lirc_sir lirc_dev cls_route cls_u32 cls_fw sch_sfq sch_htb ipt_addrtype xt_DSCP xt_dscp xt_NFQUEUE xt_iprange xt_hashlimit xt_connmark nf_conntrack_sip w83697hf_wdt [last unloaded: lirc_dev]

Pid: 22422, comm: lircd Tainted: G      D     2.6.36.2_01 #3 CN700-8237R/ 
EIP: 0060:[] EFLAGS: 00010246 CPU: 0
EIP is at lirc_get_pdata+0x2e9/0x841 [lirc_dev]
EAX: f63fdec0 EBX: 80046900 ECX: 08062348 EDX: 80046900
ESI: f63fdec0 EDI: 00000000 EBP: 00000007 ESP: dc67bf14
 DS: 007b ES: 007b FS: 0000 GS: 0033 SS: 0068
Process lircd (pid: 22422, ti=dc67a000 task=f3dddc00 task.ti=dc67a000)
Stack:
 08062348 f63fdec0 fd6f82bd 00000007 00000007 c1079b76 c1deb3a0 f576a7ac
<0> b78287c0 00000004 00000028 c105d5f3 f5d17b78 000000c7 00000000 00000000
<0> 00000000 f5dbd900 b78287c0 f5d17b78 000000a0 00000246 f63fdec0 00000020
Call Trace:
 [] ? lirc_get_pdata+0x2bd/0x841 [lirc_dev]
 [] ? do_vfs_ioctl+0x456/0x4a1
 [] ? handle_mm_fault+0x2e0/0x672
 [] ? sys_ioctl+0x44/0x64
 [] ? sysenter_do_call+0x12/0x26
Code: 57 56 89 c6 53 89 d3 83 ec 04 83 3d 78 98 6f fd 00 89 0c 24 8b 78 68 74 12 52 ff 77 28 57 68 37 8f 6f fd e8 5a 0d ce c3 83 c4 10 <8b> 47 5c 85 c0 74 1d 8b 68 20 85 ed 74 16 8b 0c 24 89 f0 89 da 
EIP: [] lirc_get_pdata+0x2e9/0x841 [lirc_dev] SS:ESP 0068:dc67bf14
CR2: 000000000000005c
---[ end trace 1bec319525f4926b ]---

In my digging I found that parts of lirc are now in the linux kernel as of 2.6.36. But it's not obvious how to make use of this yet.

First - the lirc_dev module is selected from the "Drivers > Staging" section. But it won't appear there until you enable "Drivers > Multimedia > Infrared remove control adapters". This is where the IR_CORE is selected.

Next - lirc-0.9 is going to be needed to make proper use of these in-kernel modules. As of writing this lirc-0.9 is still pre-release, so I have taken the shortest path to get a working remote.

On my gentoo system, after building my new kernel and installing it I used to emerge lirc again to make sure the modules are in place. This is no longer necessary since the modules I need are fully in kernel. I've found that simply replacing the lirc built modules with the in-kernel ones, and continuing to use lirc-0.8.7 appears to work now. The lirc modules loaded are lirc_dev and lirc_sir.

See the new maintainers blog post about this at http://wilsonet.com/?p=85