how to check and install webcam driver?
 

hi folks,

i need to know if i have the webcam driver installed correctly(proprietary driver) for my built-in webcam

when i do lsusb i get the below output for my webcam
Silicon Motion WebCam SC-13HDL11939N

now i need to know if the drivers are installed for it and if not how do i go about installing it?

bumped into this documentation
http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:har...aphics_drivers

just found this link to install amd and nvidia proprietary drivers so the procedure should be the same i guess...but how do i check if the driver is installed or not already?

If lsusb tells you the right brand and model, that means it got the information about the vendor id and device id from the the webcam, so you can safely assume that a driver is loaded that works.

You can also plug in the camera, then issue "dmesg|tail" as root. That probably will give you a confirmation.

Anyway I believe that actually many webcams do not need a specific driver on Linux. Just try to use it and see what happens. Of course you should be a member of the relevant groups, like plugdev, audio, video IIRC.

Do you know if you need a proprietary driver? Many webcams are supported out of the box with Slackware.

To check and see if your camera works with the default install, there's several options in the below webpage. I'd probably suggest trying VLC if you have that installed or you can try mplayer, but it's a semi-complex command instead of the simple GUI with VLC. You can also try with a number of different web-based chats including Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts, or Mozilla's Firefox Hello. Then there's the always popular (on Windows, anyway) Skype, but you need either 32bit or multilib (if you're running 64bit) and pulseaudio (I think libpulse can be used if you don't want all of pulseaudio). This is more work than it's worth to just check the camera, however, if you do intend on using Skype, you'll need to tackle it at some point.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Webcam

i ran the dmesg command before too but i didnt receive any related info to *cam* or *silicon* in it....so isnt it loaded?

@bassmadrigal:
i will install skype and yes i know the 32 bit catch there...alien bob has a good article on it...will update after i install skype...
could you tell me how i can check from mplayer for now though cos i have that installed on my machine...

@bassmadrigal:
found it and yes i see myself there on mplayer...cool so its working...thanks folks...
mplayer -cache 128 -tv driver=v4l2:width=640:height=480 -vo xv tv://
link here for the same : http://tips4linux.com/viewing-a-webc...ayer-in-linux/

As it is working with the v4l2 option, then an alternative testing program is 'qv4l2'.