How to Obtain, Build and Install V4L-DVB Device Drivers

An outline of the procedure used to successfully build the drivers in video4linux CVS. If you want the drivers already working properly in the kernel these are not the instructions to follow.

I did this on linux-2.6.12-gentoo and tested the lgdt3302 driver for a card I own. It should be applicable to the other drivers in CVS as well. CVS is usually only going to work on recent linux kernels.

If your kernel is already set up as outlined in step one, then it is safe to skip to step 3.

1) Configure your kernel. If multimedia drivers in addition to those specified here are selected, you may end up loading an old copy of a module compiled by the kernel rather than the new version just compiled from CVS.

Run:

   make menuconfig

in the Linux source directory and set things like this:

   Device Driver --->
       Multimedia Devices --->
           <M> Video for Linux
               Digital Video Broadcasting Devices --->
                   [*] DVB for Linux
                   <M> DVB Core

If you don't need any of the digital drivers, then you do not need to select DVB Core.

                   < > DVB Core

No other drivers or options should be selected under Multimedia Devices ---> or any lower level.

2) Follow your normal procedure for recompiling and installing your kernel if you changed anything with menuconfig in step 1.

3a) Check out v4l-dvb CVS files following the instructions at linuxtv.org [Repeated here].

   cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.linuxtv.org:/cvs/video4linux login
   cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.linuxtv.org:/cvs/video4linux co v4l-dvb

3b) (optional) You can later update your sources by running:

   cvs -z3 up -dP

4) Change into the v4l-dvb directory:

   cd v4l-dvb

5) Compile the modules:

   make

6) As root, after compiling the modules you can make them available to the OS with:

   make install

7) Now you can install the driver you need into the OS. Each driver from within CVS has been built.

My particular driver needs:

   modprobe -v cx8800
   modprobe -v cx88-dvb

The -v option is handy for checking where the driver module actually was found. If your startup scripts are configured correctly, these modules can be set up to load automatically on system boot.

8) (optional) If you later decide to recompile v4l-dvb cvs against a different kernel, you must wipe out the version info:

   make distclean