Is my internal webcam (ThinkPad T530) broken? If so, how can I disable it?

doetoe · 09-10-2017, 06:24 PM

I recently bought a refurbished second hand Lenovo ThinkPad T530. It mostly works very well, but the internal webcam seems to have a problem, which sometimes causes the laptop not to boot on Linux (I'm dual booting, on Windows it always booted so far, once the webcam worked, but usually not on Windows either).

If indeed the webcam is broken, I can live without it, but I would like it to boot consistently. Is there a way to just bypass it during startup?

Below is some system information that seems to indicate a problem. Does it indeed indicate that it is broken?

$ uname -a
Linux ThinkPad-T530 4.10.0-33-generic #37~16.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Fri Aug 11 14:07:24 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

lsusb doesn't show it (at this boot)

Code:

    $ lsusb
    Bus 002 Device 003: ID 046d:c06a Logitech, Inc. USB Optical Mouse
    Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
    Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
    Bus 001 Device 003: ID 17ef:1003 Lenovo Integrated Smart Card Reader
    Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
    Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
    Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
    Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

My syslog seems to indicate some kind of error:

Code:

    $ cat /var/log/syslog
    
    Sep 10 03:14:24 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [ 4638.962216] usb 1-1.6: USB disconnect, device number 4
    Sep 10 03:14:24 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [ 4639.093266] usb 1-1.6: new full-speed USB device number 5 using ehci-pci
    Sep 10 03:14:24 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [ 4639.173295] usb 1-1.6: device descriptor read/64, error -32
    Sep 10 03:14:24 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [ 4639.361305] usb 1-1.6: device descriptor read/64, error -32
    Sep 10 03:14:24 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [ 4639.549279] usb 1-1.6: new full-speed USB device number 6 using ehci-pci
    Sep 10 03:14:24 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [ 4639.629319] usb 1-1.6: device descriptor read/64, error -32
    Sep 10 03:14:24 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [ 4639.817317] usb 1-1.6: device descriptor read/64, error -32
    Sep 10 03:14:25 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [ 4640.005319] usb 1-1.6: new full-speed USB device number 7 using ehci-pci
    Sep 10 03:14:25 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [ 4640.421344] usb 1-1.6: device not accepting address 7, error -32
    Sep 10 03:14:25 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [ 4640.501367] usb 1-1.6: new full-speed USB device number 8 using ehci-pci
    Sep 10 03:14:25 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [ 4640.917436] usb 1-1.6: device not accepting address 8, error -32
    Sep 10 03:14:25 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [ 4640.917625] usb 1-1-port6: unable to enumerate USB device
    ...
    Sep 10 04:40:03 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [ 9777.896156] usb 1-1.6: new full-speed USB device number 73 using ehci-pci
    Sep 10 04:40:03 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [ 9778.312127] usb 1-1.6: device not accepting address 73, error -32
    Sep 10 04:40:03 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [ 9778.312460] usb 1-1-port6: unable to enumerate USB device
    ...
    Sep 10 19:32:56 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [    1.851518] usb 1-1.6: new full-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-pci
    ...
    Sep 10 19:32:56 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [    1.931512] usb 1-1.6: device descriptor read/64, error -32

My syslog.1 (which for some reason shows timestamps in between timestamps occurring in syslog) records the log from a different boot, in which the device didn't directly give an error, but didn't work either:

$ cat /var/log/syslog.1

Code:

    Sep 10 03:57:10 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [    4.556905] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device Integrated Camera (04f2:b2ea)
    Sep 10 03:57:10 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [    4.559387] uvcvideo 1-1.6:1.0: Entity type for entity Extension 4 was not initialized!
    Sep 10 03:57:10 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [    4.559388] uvcvideo 1-1.6:1.0: Entity type for entity Extension 3 was not initialized!
    Sep 10 03:57:10 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [    4.559389] uvcvideo 1-1.6:1.0: Entity type for entity Processing 2 was not initialized!
    Sep 10 03:57:10 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [    4.559390] uvcvideo 1-1.6:1.0: Entity type for entity Camera 1 was not initialized!
    Sep 10 03:57:10 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [    4.559458] input: Integrated Camera as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.6/1-1.6:1.0/input/input16
    Sep 10 03:57:10 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [    4.559526] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo
    Sep 10 03:57:10 ThinkPad-T530 kernel: [    4.559527] USB Video Class driver (1.1.1)

Please let me know if I should include more system information and how I can obtain it.

Does this indeed indicate that there is a physical problem with my webcam? If so, as it sometimes seems to prevent me to boot normally, is there a way to just bypass it during startup?

Note: I posted the same question on Unix & Linux Stackexchange, but there seems to be very little traffic there.

business_kid · 09-11-2017, 11:59 AM

Just looking it up

Code:

bash-4.4$ grep b2ea /usr/share/hwdata/usb.ids
	b2ea  Integrated Camera [ThinkPad]
bash-4.4$ grep 04f2 /usr/share/hwdata/usb.ids
04f2  Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd

uvcvideo is good for a lot of them but there's a lot online. 'linux chicony thionkpad camera' is a productive search.

doetoe · 09-11-2017, 12:53 PM

Thanks for your reply, business_kid.

I am aware that the device is a Chicony Webcam (didn't know about /usr/share/hwdata/usb.ids though), but (I think) my main problem is that the device may be defective or for some other reason doesn't initialize; I think that the error code does not point to a driver issue, but rather a hardware failure. Moreover, the webcam doesn't initialize in Windows either.
Btw, if you know where I can look up error codes, that would also be very welcome.

Since the error seems to mess up the whole boot sequence, I would, if there is not easy fix, also be interested in learning if there is a way to just bypass this device, even though that would mean I can't use the webcam. I suspect that should be something independent of the device, general linux configuration, but I have no idea how to do it, and I didn't manage to find anything on the web either.

dave@burn-it.co.uk · 09-11-2017, 02:30 PM

Disable it in the BIOS

business_kid · 09-11-2017, 02:35 PM

Error codes are mainly listed in /usr/include/asm-generic/errno-base.h, & /usr/include/asm-generic/errno.h. It may well be hardware.

doetoe · 09-11-2017, 04:03 PM

Thank you both. Disabling it in the BIOS worked for me.

Do you know (for future reference and for my general education) if it would have been possible by blacklisting or some other configuration option?

The error codes in those files go from 1 to 133 on my system. Could it be that -32 in the log file corresponds to 32? Or should there be more error code definitions somewhere?

dave@burn-it.co.uk · 09-11-2017, 04:28 PM

I think it unlikely since the camera is hardware controlled and the errors would be generated before ANY OS got control.