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January 14th, 2015 17:00

problem with webcam

I don't have a /dev/video or /dev/video0 any more (or any /dev/videoN).

cheese/google-hangouts/vlc can't find a video input device.

lsusb, lspci both lack references to a camera (lspci lists the wifi card & the audio device, so that's where I'd expect it).

Has anybody run into this problem before?  Is there a way to tell if it's hardware- or software-related?

Any help appreciated. 

2 Posts

January 15th, 2015 11:00

This issue magically resolved itself.  These things happened in the interim (not necessarily in this order):

several reboots

boot from USB key with 14.4.1 on it (when the webcam still failed to work, I started to assume it was a hardware failure)

update some packages that seemed to have nothing to do with video/the kernel/anything relevant

plug USB webcam into XPS 13, get /dev/video0, but no actual video (just black screen)

go find another ubuntu laptop and:

1. plugin USB webcam: it works

2. try like hell to figure out how to list video/camera devices (lsusb, lspci, lshw all fail); discover that they show up in dmesg with the string 'uvcvideo'; run dmesg on XPS 13 just to see what would happen: output related to inegrated web camera was there; fired up cheese, and camera comes on/is working.

next steps: determine appropriate sacrifice to appropriate supernatural force

350 Posts

January 15th, 2015 20:00

In the past, I've agonized over why the webcam wasn't working, only to realize that I'd blacklisted the necessary kernel module!

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