webcam software broken with UVCVIDEO webcams (was uvcvideo broken on Lenovo W500)

I have the exact same problem on the uvcvideo integrated webcam in my Dell Inspiron 1420 after upgrading to intrepid release candidate. Following your instructions (by building the uvc from svn and overwriting the one that shipped with intrepid) I was able to fix this problem. I hope kernel devs/packages patch this before intrepid goes final or there are going to be a lot of unhappy folks with uvc webcams that don't work.

Unfortunately, recompiling fresh uvcvideo driver from SVN didnt solve this one for me.

My camera (Sanyo W33SA) worked fine in Hardy, it even seems to be working fine in Intrepid when using Ekiga and luvcview. No go in gstreamer apps (cheese).

Could this be a gstreamer bug?

Seems there are regressions with gstreamer and some other webcam drivers concerning the integration with libv4l library (format conversion library recently introduced). Maybe same stuff happens here with uvcvideo / gstreamer / libv4l combination?

Samir, in my case (and I think the original reporters) no program worked including luvcview and ekiga. So, I think your bug is a separate issue?

Hi!

This is most probably a dup from bug #290506

Could you confirm to us if changing the resolution within cheese properties menu to 176x144would give you video?

thanks!

No, it does not. In my case (and the original reporters) the webcam does not work in any application. It is not a cheese specific problem. There is a problem with the uvcvideo driver in the kernel shipped with ubuntu. Compiling the driver from svn fixes the problem - this new driver should be patched in the ubuntu kernel package.

Ok so this is clearly a linux kernel regression. I'll mark it that way.

Thanks!!

James or Jdeslip have you noticed with kernel introduced the bug?

It seems this was introduced between intrepid alpha and release candidate?

i've marked the last known good kernel as hardy but i want to update with the intrepid one that worked before breakage.

Thanks!

I only upgraded to intrepid at the release candidate level (where this bug occured). So, I am not sure exactly when it was introduced. I am guessing it happened when the switch was made to 2.6.27.

I just recently got a new Lenovo W500 laptop with a built-in camera. So I'm not sure if this ever worked.

Where is "trunk" folder? I couldn't find it following instructions at http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=HowTo_compile_for_Ubuntu_6.06_LTS

I found the following: if I install "camorama", cheese (automatically) freezes and webcam led turns on. It doesn't turns off, even when I force cheese to quit.

Before doing "cd trunk" you need to check-out the latest source code from the linux-uvc project by doing:

svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk

Whether I have camorama installed or not does not effect this bug for me. Either way cheese (and other progs) turn on the webcam led but don't display any video with the uvcvideo module included in intrepid.

I installed subversion from berlios.de and changed Makefile. I rebooted. I got an output in cheese as I changed resolution (176x144). However, if I try to take a picture, screen goes white and system crashes.
I forgot to mention that camorama doesn't work on my laptop (Dell 1525n, built-in camera).

dmesg:

[ 15.139137] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
[ 15.189482] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device Laptop Integrated Webcam (05a9:2640)
[ 15.189829] uvcvideo: Failed to query (135) UVC control 1 (unit 0) : -32 (exp. 26).
[ 15.222414] input: Laptop Integrated Webcam as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.7/usb3/3-1/3-1:1.0/input/input8
[ 15.222491] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo
[ 15.222513] USB Video Class driver (v0.1.0)

This issue is still present on the -2.6.27-8 kernel just sent to the proposed repo...

Hi, as this is one of many of the bug reports concerning webcams malfunctioning in Intrepid, and looking for get a good vision of the issues presented these are the metabugs that should receive it's corresponding duplicates.

bug #260918 - libv4l issues with GSPCA neither cheese, ekiga, camorama work.
bug #290506 - gstreamer/cheese issues with UVCVIDEO. cheese only works with low resolution. ekiga and others work.
bug #287888 - issues with UVCVIDEO neither cheese, ekiga, camorama, kopete work.
bug #282473 - cheese, ekiga issues with green screen using PWC module.

Please don't hesitate in add more bugs or indicate something else.

Thanks a lot.

Jdeslip did you already tested with kernel2.6.27-8.17smb2 in proposed?

sudo apt-cache policy linux-image-2.6.27-8-generic
linux-image-2.6.27-8-generic:
  Instalados: 2.6.27-8.17smb2
  Candidato: 2.6.27-8.17smb2
  Tabla de versión:
 *** 2.6.27-8.17smb2 0
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.6.27-8.17 0
        500 http://co.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-proposed/main Packages

it includes some of the fixes from mainstream and a patch from uvcvideo.

If it isn't working we would need to find which commit is solving the issue in your case from there:

http://linuxtv.org/hg/~pinchartl/uvcvideo

Also for the sake of the completeness of this bug report could you add the output as separate attachments from this commands:

uname -a > uname-a.log

cat /proc/version_signature > version.log

dmesg > dmesg.log

sudo lspci -vvnn > lspci-vvnn.log

sudo lsusb -vvv > lsusb-vvv.log

Thanks again

Hi Andres,

Yes. I tried with the kernel in proposed and it still has a problem. When I say I compile uvcvideo from svn I meant from here: http://svn.berlios.de/svnroot/repos/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk which is currently at revision 263. I am not sure how this is connected with the svn repo in your link.

Atacched is the outputs you asked for.

Also,

I just tried to make the latest revision at http://linuxtv.org/hg/~pinchartl/uvcvideo but it made a whole ton of differernt drivers (not just uvcvideo). When I copied the compiled uvcvideo.ko to the kernel directory and tried to modprobe it I got a bunch of errors:

[ 2502.662632] uvcvideo: disagrees about version of symbol v4l_compat_translate_ioctl
[ 2502.662648] uvcvideo: Unknown symbol v4l_compat_translate_ioctl
[ 2502.663175] uvcvideo: disagrees about version of symbol video_devdata
[ 2502.663177] uvcvideo: Unknown symbol video_devdata
[ 2502.663928] uvcvideo: disagrees about version of symbol video_unregister_device
[ 2502.663930] uvcvideo: Unknown symbol video_unregister_device
[ 2502.664190] uvcvideo: disagrees about version of symbol video_device_alloc
[ 2502.664192] uvcvideo: Unknown symbol video_device_alloc
[ 2502.664366] uvcvideo: disagrees about version of symbol video_register_device
[ 2502.664369] uvcvideo: Unknown symbol video_register_device
[ 2502.664842] uvcvideo: disagrees about version of symbol video_usercopy
[ 2502.664844] uvcvideo: Unknown symbol video_usercopy
[ 2502.664920] uvcvideo: disagrees about version of symbol video_device_release
[ 2502.664922] uvcvideo: Unknown symbol video_device_release

The latest revision at berlios still works.

Andres, I think this a duplicate of Bug 290506 afterall. I realized that all the other applications work with the camera if I run them before running cheese. After reloading the uvcvideo module the webcam works until I run cheese, then it is broken in every program! However, upgrading to the latest svn version of uvcvideo (from berlios) seems to fix the cheese issue.

ohh, that's nice to know. In fact i've got the exact same camera, even the same laptop and was affected by that bug, i was about to tell you that... anyway, i'm marking this as a dupe from that one

thanks jdeslip!

Thanks Andres. Also after reading Bug 290506, I now understood what you meant by the 2.6.27-8.17smb2 kernel. I just installed it from Stefan's repo and it fixes the bug! The failed attempt above was for the 2.6.27-8 kernel in the ubuntu-proposed repo (which is what I thought you were talking about. The smb2 kernel does in fact fix this.