Enabling a Logitech Quickcam Messenger on Ubuntu 12.04
 

Hi Folks

This is probably a familiar cry - "Ubuntu 12.04 will not recognise my webcam!"

I have spent a fair bit of time looking for and trying out, solutions running through installing Cheese, to compiling drivers for Logitech, but all share the same result - nothing.

From this forum I have discovered that the kernel appears to be 3.2.0-39 and that there is a driver, having tried dmesg | grep -iC5 video

The output was:
[ 0.607946] TCP: Hash tables configured (established 524288 bind 65536)
[ 0.607948] TCP reno registered
[ 0.607959] UDP hash table entries: 4096 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
[ 0.608034] UDP-Lite hash table entries: 4096 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
[ 0.608147] NET: Registered protocol family 1
[ 0.608161] pci 0000:00:01.0: Boot video device
[ 0.608188] pci 0000:00:10.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[ 0.608230] pci 0000:00:10.0: PCI INT A disabled
[ 0.608238] pci 0000:00:10.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
[ 0.608264] pci 0000:00:10.1: PCI INT B disabled
[ 0.608272] pci 0000:00:12.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
--
[ 10.700626] type=1400 audit(1363883953.686:4): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" pid=708 comm="apparmor_parser"
[ 10.700647] type=1400 audit(1363883953.686:5): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" pid=668 comm="apparmor_parser"
[ 10.700858] type=1400 audit(1363883953.686:6): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script" pid=708 comm="apparmor_parser"
[ 10.700883] type=1400 audit(1363883953.686:7): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script" pid=668 comm="apparmor_parser"
[ 11.238499] nf_conntrack version 0.5.0 (16384 buckets, 65536 max)
[ 11.446710] Linux video capture interface: v2.00
[ 11.476076] gspca_main: v2.14.0 registered
[ 11.482104] gspca_main: STV06xx-2.14.0 probing 046d:08f6
[ 11.482108] gspca_stv06xx: st6422 sensor detected
[ 11.773317] ip6_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team
[ 11.824886] input: STV06xx as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:15.2/0000:03:00.0/usb10/10-1/input/input4

Being a newbie, most of this is gibberish, but it looks as if we have the appropriate driver for video.

This forum also advised checking permissions with: ls -l /dev/video0

The outut was:
crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 0 Mar 21 16:39 /dev/video0

This I assume shows that it is enabled.

So my question is, what should I do next to get it and Skype to connect?

Your advice would be appreciated, but bear in mind that the last programming I did was Cobol back in the days when the BBC Computer and CP/M were big...

Thanks.

Pete

Have you added your user to the video group? If not, that may be your problem.

Hi Cliff

Thanks for the suggestion. As a true Newbie, I am not sure where to find the video group. The Ubuntu Desktop Guide does not recognise that term. I have worked my way through Ubuntu System Settings and the one thing that seems to be missing is Webcam. There is a sound option and the microphone input is the webcam microphone, which works nicely.

I have found a colour section that lists the attached printer plus 046d Webcam and states that is uncalibrated. Attempting to calibrate it leads to a dead end as the option looks for a data file of some sort, and I have no idea where such files are to be found, or whether I have to learn all about colour coding...

The additional drivers option only seems to find additional graphics card drivers.

I fear that the fog of ignorance still looms thick!

Regards

Pete

A different approach...
 

Hi Folks

I have found http://qce-ga.sourceforge.net/ which offers USB webcam drivers for Linux. Like a good boy, I have downloaded the appropriate file and followed the instruction:

Go to Download folder for the driver file: qc-usb-0.6.6.tar.gz

Extracted with:
tar zxvf qc-usb-0.6.6.tar.gz
giving the result:
qc-usb-0.6.6/
qc-usb-0.6.6/qc-memory.c
qc-usb-0.6.6/linux-2.6.18.patch
qc-usb-0.6.6/qcweb-info.txt
qc-usb-0.6.6/qc-hdcs.c
qc-usb-0.6.6/README.qce
qc-usb-0.6.6/quickcam.h
qc-usb-0.6.6/APPLICATIONS
qc-usb-0.6.6/videodev2.h
qc-usb-0.6.6/Module.symvers
qc-usb-0.6.6/linux-2.6.8.1-quickcam.patch
qc-usb-0.6.6/qc-mjpeg.c
qc-usb-0.6.6/videodevfix.h
qc-usb-0.6.6/Makefile
qc-usb-0.6.6/TODO
qc-usb-0.6.6/linux-2.6.7-quickcam.patch
qc-usb-0.6.6/COPYING
qc-usb-0.6.6/linux-2.4.20-quickcam.patch
qc-usb-0.6.6/quickcam.sh
qc-usb-0.6.6/qc-memory.h
qc-usb-0.6.6/CREDITS
qc-usb-0.6.6/qcset.c
qc-usb-0.6.6/debug.sh
qc-usb-0.6.6/testquickcam/
qc-usb-0.6.6/testquickcam/testquickcam.h
qc-usb-0.6.6/testquickcam/Makefile
qc-usb-0.6.6/testquickcam/testquickcam.c
qc-usb-0.6.6/testquickcam/CVS/
qc-usb-0.6.6/show.c
qc-usb-0.6.6/qc-driver.c
qc-usb-0.6.6/qc-pb0100.c
qc-usb-0.6.6/qc-formats.c
qc-usb-0.6.6/Modules.symvers
qc-usb-0.6.6/FAQ
qc-usb-0.6.6/freeshm.sh
qc-usb-0.6.6/qc-vv6410.c
qc-usb-0.6.6/CVS/

That looked good, so changed to the driver folder:
cd qc-usb-0.6.6

Compiled the driver with make all giving:
make all
make -C "/lib/modules/3.2.0-39-generic/build" SUBDIRS="/home/peter/Downloads/qc-usb-0.6.6" modules V=1 USER_OPT="-DHAVE_UTSRELEASE_H="
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-39-generic'
test -e include/generated/autoconf.h -a -e include/config/auto.conf || ( \
echo; \
echo " ERROR: Kernel configuration is invalid."; \
echo " include/generated/autoconf.h or include/config/auto.conf are missing.";\
echo " Run 'make oldconfig && make prepare' on kernel src to fix it."; \
echo; \
/bin/false)
mkdir -p /home/peter/Downloads/qc-usb-0.6.6/.tmp_versions ; rm -f /home/peter/Downloads/qc-usb-0.6.6/.tmp_versions/*
make -f scripts/Makefile.build obj=/home/peter/Downloads/qc-usb-0.6.6
gcc -Wp,-MD,/home/peter/Downloads/qc-usb-0.6.6/.qc-driver.o.d -nostdinc -isystem /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.6/include -I/usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-39-generic/arch/x86/include -Iarch/x86/include/generated -Iinclude -include /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-39-generic/include/linux/kconfig.h -Iubuntu/include -D__KERNEL__ -Wall -Wundef -Wstrict-prototypes -Wno-trigraphs -fno-strict-aliasing -fno-common -Werror-implicit-function-declaration -Wno-format-security -fno-delete-null-pointer-checks -O2 -m64 -mtune=generic -mno-red-zone -mcmodel=kernel -funit-at-a-time -maccumulate-outgoing-args -fstack-protector -DCONFIG_AS_CFI=1 -DCONFIG_AS_CFI_SIGNAL_FRAME=1 -DCONFIG_AS_CFI_SECTIONS=1 -DCONFIG_AS_FXSAVEQ=1 -pipe -Wno-sign-compare -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables -mno-sse -mno-mmx -mno-sse2 -mno-3dnow -Wframe-larger-than=1024 -Wno-unused-but-set-variable -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fno-optimize-sibling-calls -pg -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wno-pointer-sign -fno-strict-overflow -fconserve-stack -DCC_HAVE_ASM_GOTO -DNOKERNEL -DHAVE_UTSRELEASE_H= -DMODULE -D"KBUILD_STR(s)=#s" -D"KBUILD_BASENAME=KBUILD_STR(qc_driver)" -D"KBUILD_MODNAME=KBUILD_STR(quickcam)" -c -o /home/peter/Downloads/qc-usb-0.6.6/.tmp_qc-driver.o /home/peter/Downloads/qc-usb-0.6.6/qc-driver.c
In file included from /home/peter/Downloads/qc-usb-0.6.6/qc-driver.c:47:0:
/home/peter/Downloads/qc-usb-0.6.6/quickcam.h:79:28: fatal error: linux/autoconf.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
make[2]: *** [/home/peter/Downloads/qc-usb-0.6.6/qc-driver.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/peter/Downloads/qc-usb-0.6.6] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-39-generic'
make: *** [quickcam.ko] Error 2

Looks as if there are real problems in compilation. So, given the error at the start of the output, plus the instruction, do CD to /usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-39-generic then do:
make oldconfig && make prepare

giving the result
HOSTCC scripts/basic/fixdep
scripts/basic/fixdep.c:433:1: fatal error: opening dependency file scripts/basic/.fixdep.d: Permission denied
compilation terminated.
make[1]: *** [scripts/basic/fixdep] Error 1
make: *** [scripts_basic] Error 2

Thus it looks as if one is up against that old red brick wall again! I have tried re-installing Cheese on the off chance, but that will not even run any more.:(

Your further thoughts would be welcome.

Thanks

Pete