Hi, im trying to make the webcam work. It doesn't power up when a program requests it. The only way I've made it work is if I run this command requested here:

https://community.jitsi.org/t/old-we...-drivers/38033

I ran this command:

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/firefox

Then opened a website to test the camera and it detected it and powered up. However, the default settings for the cam are so bad. Brightness and contrast is all over the place, I want to use Webcamoid to tweak and I also want to be able to have a blank image when I go afk in calls but it wouldn't work. When I open it, I get this error:

With "sudo webcamoid" I get this:

I've found this link where someone had the same error:

https://github.com/webcamoid/webcamoid/issues/142

I think they point to deleting some line of code somewhere and recompiling but the link there doesn't work. Also that's from years ago so should be fixed by now.

I have no idea how to go about this. I just would like to get the camera working, adjust the settings like I can do on Windows, and use Webcamoid to have a static image when I need to. Would like to know if someone can come up with a solution. Before I found the "LD_PRELOAD" method I just assumed the drivers are ancient and it wouldn't work but it does work, so there should be a way to get this setup.

Details:

Distro: Elementary 5.1 stable
Camera: ID 046d:092f Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Express Plus

I've tried installing Webcamoid by "sudo apt install webcamoid" as well as using the installer, appimage, portable. The daily build as well. There's no way to open this program as it stands.

The "XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set..." error message that you are getting when you run sudo webcamoid is probably unrelated to the issue you are attempting to resolve. Sudo is very specific about what environmental variables are passed on to the command that it executes, in this case webcamoid. Typically, what environmental variables get passed by sudo is controlled by the sudo configuration file /etc/sudoers, but fine tuning the performance of sudo is not on the critical path to fixing your camera problem. Best to only break one thing at a time; that's my motto.

Since LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/firefox gave your web browser access to your camera, perhaps the same approach will work with webcamoid. Maybe not, but there is no harm in trying LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libv4l/v4l1compat.so webcamoid.

The LD_PRELOAD is instructing the runtime linker/loader to load the specified shared library, /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libv4l/v4l1compat.so, before it loads any other shared libraries, when you run a program that uses shared libraries. The vast majority of compiled programs use shared libraries. LD_PRELOAD did the trick with firefox. Perhaps it will do the trick with webcamoid.

If you do decide to mess with your /etc/sudoers, I recommend that you first read the man page for sudoers, then take a non-invasive look at the configuration file itself, perhaps via less /etc/sudoers, then, if you still want to mess with it, first make a backup copy: sudo cp -p /etc/sudoers /etc/sudoers.backup. On the distribution I am using, it is recommended that editing /etc/sudoers only be done with the program visudo.

1 members found this post helpful.

@ joeyx :-

I'm no expert with this stuff, but here's a couple of thoughts.

If your camera had been supported by the Linux UVC (USB Video Class) kernel driver module, it would have made this SO much easier. But looking at the home page, as you can see,

....is NOT mentioned.

http://www.ideasonboard.org/uvc/

(I'm lucky; my own c920 HD 'Pro' IS supported. Hardly surprising, since it's actually quite an old model, although I'd been after one for years; I picked mine up in the Black Friday Sale about 3 years ago for half-price.....and I'd researched and found out before buying it that the UVC module did in fact support it.)

The other thing I wanted to say is that IF you try the 'portable' version, this should in fact be unpacked into, and run from your /home/user directory.....not installed, and not run with 'sudo'. It's not needed. That's the whole point of a 'portable'; you can run 'em from anywhere, since they usually unpack themselves into /tmp, and run from there for the duration.

Just my two-penn'orth, FWIW. Oh; a further thought. Probably a daft idea, but have you tried Guvcview? It has a good range of adjustments, and often works with older cameras.

Mike.

2 members found this post helpful.

Yeah, I've put the portable file on /home/user/ and gave it the required permissions and then double click it. It tries to open but fails.

I need Webcamoid because I like to have an "afk" or "please stand by" sort of picture when I have to leave the call with a single click, and you can do this by quickly change the feed into a static image and back to your camera feed with Webcamoid. It is similar to Manycam for Windows.

I really don't know what to do. What's weird is, I remember a while ago trying Webcamoid and it worked (as in opened, but I wasn't aware of the "LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libv4l/v4l1compat.so" trick by then, otherwise I would have tried as suggested by emmet, but right not the software just wouldn't open. The distro I tried was a Tails live DVD I think. This is weird because ElementaryOS should have more stuff on it than Tails as in more libraries or whatever needed to run software.

I think it has to be either an update of Webcamoid that screwed this up or that this distro is not working with this software for some reason. May try again later with Tails and see what happens.

I tried this, unfortunately returns the same segmentation fault error.