Dell xps 13 9370 Webcam support

Hi Justin

  thanks again for your support. It is really appreciated!

  I and a few others tried out the firmware downgrade to 1.0.
  Is there any chance for us to re-upgrade the camera firmware to 1.5?

Thanks in advance
Stefano

Hi Stefano,

I'm working on that question as well and will message out when I know more. 

I tried the patched kernel mentioned in this Launchpad entry:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1763748/comments/34

and now the webcam works. "dmesg | grep -i uvcvideo" shows now:

[    2.341423] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.50 device Integrated_Webcam_HD (0bda:58f4)
[    2.344440] uvcvideo 1-5:1.0: Entity type for entity Integrated_Webcam_HD was not initialized!
[    2.344443] uvcvideo 1-5:1.0: Entity type for entity Extension 4 was not initialized!
[    2.344445] uvcvideo 1-5:1.0: Entity type for entity Extension 7 was not initialized!
[    2.344446] uvcvideo 1-5:1.0: Entity type for entity Processing 2 was not initialized!
[    2.344448] uvcvideo 1-5:1.0: Entity type for entity Camera 1 was not initialized!
[    2.345086] uvcvideo: Unknown video format 00000032-0002-0010-8000-00aa00389b71
[    2.345092] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.50 device Integrated_Webcam_HD (0bda:58f4)
[    2.351769] uvcvideo: Unable to create debugfs 1-2 directory.
[    2.351822] uvcvideo 1-5:1.2: Entity type for entity Extension 10 was not initialized!
[    2.351824] uvcvideo 1-5:1.2: Entity type for entity Extension 12 was not initialized!
[    2.351826] uvcvideo 1-5:1.2: Entity type for entity Processing 9 was not initialized!
[    2.351828] uvcvideo 1-5:1.2: Entity type for entity Camera 11 was not initialized!
[    2.359800] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo

I am not that familiar with the relation Ubuntu-Dell ... will Ubuntu release a patched kernel in the normal update-way, of shall I patch my own kernel?

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@Zerkovicwrote:

I am not that familiar with the relation Ubuntu-Dell ... will Ubuntu release a patched kernel in the normal update-way, of shall I patch my own kernel?

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As far as I know the patch is going to be incorporated in the Linux kernel that all distributions (not only Ubuntu) eventually get, since it has been proposed and tested in the kernel tracker. For Ubuntu, once the version of the kernel with the patch is released upstream, it will be used in the development version (18.10). For the stable released versions (16.04, 17.10 and 18.04) a "Stable Release Update" has to be proposed and accepted, that is the existing kernels have to be patched. If there is no problem with regressions and such, it is likely that this will happen soon.

In any case, it may take at least some weeks before the stable release update.

This is from Ubuntu's point of view, I don't know how Dell will manage this issue.

Tx for your cristal clear answer.

@Community,

I spoke with engineering again this morning and they advised that our official documented fix should be released tomorrow.

Hi Community,

Below is a test kernel and is considered a Dell recommended work around until the official fix is up streamed.

The test kernel is now available at:

https://people.canonical.com/~khfeng/lp1763748-rtl/

Please follow below steps to install the kernel:

Some steps to install the kernel on https://people.canonical.com/~khfeng/lp1763748-rtl/.

1. Download all Debian packages from https://people.canonical.com/~khfeng/lp1763748-rtl/
2. Open a Terminal by Ctrl+Alt+t.
3. Execute the following command in terminal to check if all Debian packages are already here to install.

$ ls -l ~/Download/
total 64428
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sylee sylee 1147000 May 11 13:34 linux-headers-4.15.0-22-generic_4.15.0-22.23_amd64.deb
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sylee sylee 11028116 May 11 13:35 linux-headers-4.15.0-22_4.15.0-22.23_all.deb
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sylee sylee 7953156 May 11 13:35 linux-image-unsigned-4.15.0-22-generic_4.15.0-22.23_amd64.deb
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sylee sylee 12978460 May 11 13:35 linux-modules-4.15.0-22-generic_4.15.0-22.23_amd64.deb
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sylee sylee 32836820 May 11 13:36 linux-modules-extra-4.15.0-22-generic_4.15.0-22.23_amd64.deb

4. Execute the following command in terminal to install the kernel $ sudo dpkg -i Download/linux*.deb

5. Run sudo update-grub then reboot the system to use the new kernel.

If you want to remove the testing kernel, just execute `sudo apt purge linux-headers-4.15.0-22 linux-headers-4.15.0-22-generic linux-image-unsigned-4.15.0-22-generic linux-modules-4.15.0-22-generic linux-modules-extra-4.15.0-22-generic`.

Super!
I'll test as soon possible this kernel and I'm wait the official fix to do a backport  also for Debian

I just tried this now on my second replacement laptop (yep, camera also didn't work on the second one which has Ubuntu) and I can confirm that after following the steps above, camera works now as it should. No need for screen replacements!

Dear community,

is it possible to adapt the kernel fixes for Fedora before the fix becomes available via upstream?

I'd appreciate any pointers how to implement and compile this myself.

Many thanks in advance.

Does this mean that if I've had my screen replaced I need not worry with this anymore? 

@Gshine,

Correct, no further action is required on your part. The fix for 1.50 which will be up streamed should be backwards compatible with 1.0. If in the future you run updates after the 1.50 fix has come out and you have an issue with the cam, simply let me know and I will see what I can do.

@yala

I don't use Fedora, but the patch can be downloaded from here https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/5/8/1117 by clicking on "Get diff 1" save the resulting file (save as... in your browser) as a file ending with .patch

I would suggest you look at this page: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Building_a_custom_kernel. Once you have the kernel source tree in a directory you should be able to apply the patch with the following commands (change the /path/to/... to the appropriate locations):

cd /path/to/kernel/source/tree/
patch -Np1 -i /path/to/file/Support-realtek-UVC-1.5-device.patch

or add the patch to the kernel.spec file (this looks useful: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Kernel/Spec). You can then build and install the rpm for the kernel and add it to the boot loader (make sure you understand how to configure the boot loader before doing this final step). Multi threading should also be used to speed up the build (try searching on a web search engine for this).