this question is going to make me sound on crack. i'm trying to install my b878 tv tuner on debian, but I can't find bttv.

but I want to install bttv and I can't find it. first I thought it was an app, like ALSA base sorta - so I tried "apt-get install bttv" -- nothing no such package.

then I looked the internet and I couldn't find any bttv package anywhere - but I find on the bttv site it says that bttv is part of the standard kernel.

ok I thought it was must be a driver - so I looked all though "make menconfig" options and yet still I can't find a bttv option!!

how do I install bttv!!!

I have installed i2c, video4linux, audio 4 b878 etc as modules - but still no bttv!!

Try doing (as root) "modprobe bttv" (without the quotes).

what has that done? is bttv installed now? i need to set up what sort of card it is. according to xawtv it's a GENERIC UNSPECIFIED i need to tell it which I have.

I think you need to do some reading first, the command I gave you loads the bttv module (which has been a part of the kernel for ages), but as I don't have a bttv card I cannot tell you how to set one up.

aha

this is a cool feature of linux I just found - starting an ssh session in and then using tail -f /var/log/messages

you can see what's going on then. I tried

> rmmod bttv
> modprobe bttv card=23
> xawtv -device /dev/video0

and it all works !!