Specifications

3. Enabling Support for Your Bt8x8 Hardware in
Linux
3.1. The Bttv Driver
Drivers for Bt8x8−based hardware have been a part of the Linux kernel since version 2.2.0, and are likely to
be already enabled in your running kernel if you have not recompiled or otherwise replaced your system's
stock kernel with a custom version. If unavailable, Bt8x8 support can be enabled two ways:
by recompiling your kernel using the source code using downloaded kernel−source from your
distribution or fetched directly from the kernel source repository
•
the Bttv driver can be fetched directly from the Bttv home page and then patching your available
kernel source, which should only be necessary if you have a kernel version prior to 2.2.0 or later than
2.0.35; earlier versions are not likely to work.
•
3.1.1. Module or In−Kernel?
It is likely the stock kernel that was installed on your Linux system, if unmodified, already supports
Bt8x8−based hardware. The driver will exist either as a loadable module or within the already running kernel.
An easy way to tell is to use the dmesg command piped into less (for easy viewing) to look for an
acknowledgement that the driver in question was loaded when your system started up:
$ dmesg | less
...which may yield something like the following, depending on your exact Bt8x8 chipset features and kernel
version (in this case, 2.6):
Jan 26 19:40:04 localhost kernel: bttv: driver version 0.9.15 loaded
Jan 26 19:40:04 localhost kernel: bttv: using 8 buffers with 2080k
(520 pages) each for capture
Jan 26 19:40:04 localhost kernel: bttv: Bt8xx card found (0).
Jan 26 19:40:04 localhost kernel: ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:02:09.0[A] −>
GSI 17 (level, low) −> IRQ 17
Jan 26 19:40:04 localhost kernel: bttv0: Bt878 (rev 2) at 0000:02:09.0,
irq: 17, latency: 32, mmio: 0xe7000000
Jan 26 19:40:04 localhost kernel: bttv0: detected: Hauppauge WinTV
[card=10], PCI subsystem ID is 0070:13eb
Jan 26 19:40:04 localhost kernel: bttv0: using: Hauppauge (bt878) [card=10,
autodetected]
Jan 26 19:40:04 localhost kernel: bttv0: using tuner=2
Jan 26 19:40:04 localhost kernel: tuner: chip found at addr 0xc2 i2c−bus
bt878 #0 [sw]
Jan 26 19:40:04 localhost kernel: tuner: type set to 2 (Philips NTSC
(FI1236, FM1236 and compatibles)) by bt878 #0 [sw]
If you don't see it, the particular driver module you are interested in may be available but not necessarily
loaded at that time. If you know what the module is named, try using find; in this example we are looking
for the 'bttv' module:
$ find /lib/modules −name bttv.o
Note that up until the 2.4 series modules had the suffix .o; for 2.6+ series kernels this was replaced with .ko.
You can get a list of all modules available by typing the following at the command line:
3. Enabling Support for Your Bt8x8 Hardware in Linux 5