Hi everyone,

I'm reasonably new to Linux, though I suspect I don't qualify as a nooby anymore. On the other hand, I'm *completely* new to webcams (never actually seen one work...). I'm having difficulty getting a QuickCam Pro 9000 working on Etch. I've read quite a few things online, including some posts here, and haven't found anything that works yet. I'm going to give quite a bit of detail just in case any experts are listening in, so sorry for the length of this post.

I'm running:
$ uname -a
Linux aragorngardens 2.6.18-6-686 #1 SMP Mon Oct 13 16:13:09 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

I'm aware that this camera works under V4L2. Insofar as I know what that means (is this a class of drivers?) I've acted on it. So I've installed a variety of packages off of the Debian repositories that seem applicable to this type of camera.

e.g.
libpt-plugins-v4l2
gqcam
ekiga
linux-uvc-tools
linux-uvc-modules-2.6.18-6-686
linux-uvc-source

and probably some others I've forgotten.

When I plug it in the system recognizes it, at least to a certain extent (creates /dev/video0 for it). lsusb -v shows:

Bus 005 Device 004: ID 046d:0990 Logitech, Inc.
Device Descriptor:
bLength 18
bDescriptorType 1
bcdUSB 2.00
bDeviceClass 239 Miscellaneous Device
bDeviceSubClass 2 Common Class
bDeviceProtocol 1 Interface Association
bMaxPacketSize0 64
idVendor 0x046d Logitech, Inc.
idProduct 0x0990
bcdDevice 0.05
iManufacturer 0
iProduct 0
iSerial 2 27CD44E4
...

which looks a little fishy to me since I doubt this is a "Miscellaneous Device" so it looks like the system doesn't quite recognize what it is.

The USB Viewer shows:

uvcvideo / snd-usb-audio
Serial Number: 27CD44E4
Speed: 480Mb/s (high)
USB Version: 2.00
Device Class: ef(unk. )
Device Subclass: 02
Device Protocol: 01
Maximum Default Endpoint Size: 64
Number of Configurations: 1
Vendor Id: 046d
Product Id: 0990
Revision Number: 0.05

which looks similarly fishy because of (unk.) under Device Class. When I run gqcam it just shows a little green box and the terminal I ran it from fills with "Error reading image" messages. In Ekiga I seem to be able to get sound (while configuring it will play back my voice to me) but no picture.

I note that the page on packages.debian.org describing linux-uvc-source says that it supports the QuickCam 5000 but doesn't mention the 9000, so I imagine this is just an issue that the 9000 is new enough that nobody's written the drivers and if I wait two months (is that overly optimistic) it'll work more easily. I'm willing to wait 2 months (or 4 or 6) but if anyone knows a way I can get it working more quickly I'd love to hear it. Has anybody got this working on a related distribution like Ubuntu?

I also note that luvcview doesn't seem to be available for Etch at the moment (it appears to be available for Sid) and that that package might be helpful. Has anybody got an idea when that package will be available in Etch stable?

Thanks folks!
Geoff

Have you tried this? If not, worth a shot, works for me.....

http://blog.gnist.org/article.php?st...uickCamPro9000

Thanks! That seems to more or less work. Now I just have to figure out how Ekiga works (like I said, I'm new to webcams...).

Currently, when I plug in the webcam here's the relevant dmesg output:

usb 5-8: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
usb 5-8: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Linux video capture interface: v2.00
uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device <unnamed> (046d:0990)
uvcvideo: UVC non compliance - GET_DEF(PROBE) not supported. Enabling workaround.
input: UVC Camera (046d:0990) as /class/input/input4
usbcore: registered new driver uvcvideo
USB Video Class driver (v0.1.0)
usbcore: registered new driver snd-usb-audio

which looks like things ought to work. I still get just a green window in gqcam and I've been reluctant to install luvcview since it's not on the Debian repository and I'm always a bit reluctant to install things the I can't just grab with apt-get. Does anyone know another viewer that might work? I can load up Ekiga and view my own mug that way, though I haven't managed to get it to connect properly yet. So now the camera is definitely working and hopefully I can figure out Ekiga.

Thanks very much SqdnGuns!

I never did manage to get the camera working with Ekiga, but I downloaded and installed Skype and everything worked right away.

A few days later I did an apt-get upgrade and the camera stopped working.

This turned out to be only a minor annoyance. I just had to go back into the uvcvideo-** directory as root and do

make

and then

make install

again. After a reboot (and resetting Skype so it was getting audio from the webcam and not somewhere else) everything seems to be working fine again.

Has anyone else had to remake uvcvideo after an upgrade on Debian? I expect it might have something to do with the fact that I haven't installed it to the "proper" location. At the moment it is stupidly sitting in a subdirectory of my Desktop, which a dumb place for it, I know, but I'm not sure where I should put it.

you would have to do that if you got a kernel update.

You would need to do the same for ATI or nVidia graphics drivers after a kernel update.

hello!
I'am a new user on Linux, I try to setup the webcam Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 on debian, I followed the instructions on the link you said
but when I runed sudo make install I obtained this error messaj:
Installing USB Video Class driver...
make: *** /lib/modules/2.6.26-1-686/build: No such file or directory. Stop.
make: *** [install] Error 2

what I have to do??

Hi,

Please start a new thread for your problem.

Even better yet please google for answers to your problems before you spoil the forums with newbie questions or Read the Frigging Manual.

Don't you think you are exaggerating ?

The suggestion for a new thread was usefull, your sniping at a new user was not.

This new User DID take the advice offered and started a new thread for his issue, where he has received assistance.

Have some consideration for others, If you don't have anything useful to contribute silence is best. Please keep in mind, we were all newbies at one time.

Thanks for your consideration in this matter.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all of the earlier help. The places I've found most useful are

http://linux-uvc.berlios.de/
http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.ph...Device_Drivers

Under Etch I was able, after following the instructions on those sites, to get my webcam working well enough to use Skype which was the main thing I wanted it for. Some things never worked. For example luvcview would never display anything.

I just recently did a complete reinstall so I'm now running Lenny. While uvcvideo is included in Lenny, it wasn't enough to run the QuickCam 9000. I still needed to get a newer version of uvcvideo from linuxtv.org and build it. For any newbies reading this, be sure you've already done:

apt-get install make gcc linux-headers-[your linux version here] build-essential

otherwise the make of uvcvideo won't work.

Having done all of that I was able to install luvcview and get it to work and install skype and get it to work.

So, final message, this camera is working somewhat better under Lenny than it was under Etch, but it still takes a bit of effort to get it working.