Installing the latest V4L TV tuner drivers for Ubuntu 9.04

Bill Giannikos (Home Page)

While Ubuntu 9.04 already includes a version of the V4L driver drivers, these drivers are under constant development and your TV Tuner card may require a later version than the one included in Ubuntu. Here we will guide you in the necessary steps in installing the latest developmental V4L drivers.

This guide installs the “up to the minute” development drivers. These drivers have not been fully tested yet so may cause unexpected results in some cases. Although it is highly unlikely this procedure will damage your Ubuntu installation, it is still recommended you run a backup of your important data beforehand.

You should run a full update for your installation of Ubuntu to ensure you have all the latest packages installed.

Here are the steps in installing the latest V4L drivers.

1. Load up a terminal window if you are in the graphic interface.

2. Type in the following to install gcc, mercurial and the kernel headers:

sudo apt-get install build-essential mercurial linux-headers-`uname -r`

You may be asked for your password with the above commands, type it in and press Enter.

3. Move to the /usr/src/ folder with:

cd /usr/src

4. Download the latest V4L drivers with:

sudo hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/v4l-dvb

5. Move into the newly created folder with

cd v4l-dvb

6. Now start the building process with:

sudo make

This will take a while.

7. And finally we install these drivers with:

sudo make install

8. Reboot your computer and the newer V4L drivers will be used.

Please note that if Ubuntu release a updated kernel you will have to go through the above steps again.