I have been working with Fedora Linux for a couple weeks now and have found most all of the answers I need with google. The software really is quite impressive; Open office, Ximian, Ajunta, and Xine seem to be fine programs. I have tried a few times in the past to transition, but I belive that this time I can succeed.

The only one that has stumped me is webcams. After reading several documents I am confused. Some say I have to monkey with the kernel - video4linux, for example. Others provide libararies that I am not sure what to do with - it cant be compiled or installed using RPM or ./configure - make install procedure.

The particuar cam I have is a generic USB made by GenX and is called a P42M1181. I cant find a reference to it anywhere on the net - even for a Win driver. It comes with a windows driver out of the box, but no Linux driver. I am not sure if there is a "Generic" USB webcam defninition in Linux.

Is there a procedure for using generic webcam type devices in Linux? I really cant tell where to start.



Output from /sbin/lsusb
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 04fc:0005 Sunplus Technology Co., Ltd
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 002: ID abcd:cdee

Bus 003 Device 002: ID 04fc:0005 Sunplus Technology Co., Ltd

Is this your webcam, Sunplus tech. webcam ?

libraries are gennerally installed by rpm for rpmish distros.

and yes, chances are the device already works or compile a kernel with video4linux yourwebcam support. USB support and any other protocol you can think of that it uses.

lsusb may be reporting only the firmware/chipset specs. Maybe your kernel recognizes the hardware device but doesnt load any module for using it with the installed software.

Using device manager in Windows I got the name of the camera and found a Lunux driver for it, a SPCA50x at http://spca50x.sourceforge.net/spca50x.php.

I really have no idea how to find out if video4Linux is already installed. How can I tell if video4linux is already on my system?

it appears that I can load the camera driver using insmod, is this the correct method if the file has a .o extention?

I did attempt to use the insmod command (insmod spca50X-0.30.O) but the kernel does not match what the module was compiled with. I will attempt to compile this from source and see if the insmod command works then.

well crumb.

modprobe shows videodev installed, and from reading apparently that is the video4linux module. Is this true?

When I compiled the spca50x module from source it gave errors, specifically:

Linking spca50x.o
ld: unrecognized option '--relocateable'
ld: use the --help option for usage information
make: *** [binary] Error 1

the readme states that to build the driver use "make", but it also says it assumes the source folder is /usr/src/linux, but my kernel source is at /usr/src/linux-2.4.22-1.2174.nptl. I am not sure how to specify that, the readme gives a way as make KINCLUDE=/usr/src/linux-<version>/include but I get errors with that as well.

I am not sure where to go from here.

Aside from the camera, I have having quite a bit of fun learning this OS. Alot of quality software out there! As I become more familiar with the commands and structures it is becoming much easier to work with.

> ld: unrecognized option '--relocateable'

the problem is a simple spelling error in the Makefile.

line 72 in the Makefile is
LDFLAGS = --strip-debug --relocateable

and should be
LDFLAGS = --strip-debug --relocatable

this allowed me to compile the module. sadly, insmod then failed with

[root@akira spca50x-src-0.30]# insmod spca50x.o
spca50x.o: unresolved symbol video_proc_entry_R59bd124d
spca50x.o: unresolved symbol video_register_device_Rb6537609
spca50x.o: unresolved symbol video_unregister_device_R65b80337

do let me know if you get it working. i notice the project hasn't been touched in over a year, and is unlikely to be maintained much.

.d

ok, I could never get Ayttm to use the webcam. Xawtv would always just go to a black screen. I had to remove DGA? support in X11 - I am using a ATI9200 (mobility). This corrected that problem, Xawtv works now. The spca50x driver works just fine with my webcam after correcting the X11 problem. Gnomemeeting is only capable of videoconference public IP to Public IP - but myself and the folks I intend to webcam with are behid NAT, so Gnomemeeting wouldent work (not its fault, looks like great software).

In any case, I kept ignoring GyachE because I thought it was a voice chat thing, however, It has full Yahoo! chat support, including webcam. Great software, easy to set up and very stable. Amazingly, it wont boot me off - even the official Yahoo Linux client (which lacks webcam support) does this. The network connection here in Iraq is fairly unstable, but GyachE holds on - pretty neat.

Anyway, GyachE does what I need, and does it well - you can find it at - http://phpaint.sourceforge.net/pyvoi...dex_gyache.php

i found (in this thread: http://linuxquestions.org/questions/history/158260) a link to a newer version of the spca50x driver that compiled and linked correctly.

http://spca50x.sourceforge.net/spca50x.php

the associated spcaview utility doesn't link _at all_, and gphoto doesn't support the DVC325.

i'll have to find something that recognizes it and play around.