Integrated webcam not working after upgrade to 18.04

Question

I purchased a second hand Lenovo Z370 that was successfully running Ubuntu 12.10. I did a fresh installation where I erased and installed 18.04. But my integrated webcam is not working.

1. Cheese tells me No Device Found

2. I have run sudo apt-get install libsbigudrv2 libsbigudrv0 and I get the following message

   Reading package lists... Done
   Building dependency tree       
   Reading state information... Done
   libsbigudrv0 is already the newest version (5:0.5-0ubuntu10).
   libsbigudrv2 is already the newest version (2.0.0-0ubuntu1).
   0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
   

3. I have also run ls -ltrh /dev/video* and the result I get is

   ls: cannot access '/dev/video*': No such file or directory
   

4. I have also run sudo apt-get install cheese build-essential linux-headers-``uname -r ` and what I get is

   Reading package lists... Done
   Building dependency tree       
   Reading state information... Done
   build-essential is already the newest version (12.4ubuntu1).
   cheese is already the newest version (3.28.0-1ubuntu1).
   linux-headers-4.15.0-29-generic is already the newest version (4.15.0-29.31).
   0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
   

5. I also see a camera icon on my Esc key and I pressed Fn+Esc but I'm not able to detect if anything happened. One thing I can report is that /dev/video was still not available.

6. Running lspci yields

   00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09)
   00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
   00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
   00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 05)
   00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)
   00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b5)
   00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev b5)
   00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev b5)
   00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 05)
   00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM65 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller (rev 05)
   00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05)
   00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 05)
   05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101/2/6E PCI Express Fast/Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 05)
   06:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
   

So, how do I get the webcam working?

Edit 1: Ran a few more commands based on input from Martin.

1. lsusb gives

   Bus 002 Device 007: ID 0489:e00d Foxconn / Hon Hai Broadcom Bluetooth 2.1 Device
   Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
   Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
   Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0bda:0139 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTS5139 Card Reader Controller
   Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
   Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
   

2. dmesg | grep uvc gives nothing.

3. Checked dmesg | grep uvc after running sudo modprobe uvcvideo and it yields

   [ 2901.557462] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo
   

4. Cheese still doesn't work.

Edit 2: The webcam mysteriously started working. I'm guessing the software updates in the previous months have made it possible. I first noticed this when running zoom. The webcam worked and then stopped working after 5 seconds or so. So I opened cheese and the webcam worked for maybe half a minute (with poor quality) but then stopped working.

Solution 1

For the sake of possibly saving someone else who wasted time like me, some laptops have a keyboard button to turn on the webcam, like my Clevo P150EM, Fn+F10

I also had to restart Cheese to check it worked.

Solution 2

Oddly enough I had the same problem with the Playstation eyetoy camera that should have run out of the box as it did on previous installations of Ubuntu 18.10. This could possibly work for you as it did for me. I typed lsusb in terminal and it did not recognize my camera. Cheese and other programs did not recognize it either. I had to go online to a chatting site for the dialogue to come up on if I wanted to initialize my camera. After agreeing to use my camera on Firefox suddenly it was accessible to every previous attempt that it did not work for. Let me know if that works for you.

Comments

[Martin W]

Try lsusb and look for "Lenovo Integrated Camera" or some such thing. Also, post the output of dmesg | grep uvc. If that gives nothing, try: sudo modprobe uvcvideo and try the dmesg | grep uvc command again.

[Rohit Rao]

@martin-w Please check post.

[Martin W]

Hm. That's odd. Is it possible that the integrated camera is turned off in bios? I don't have direct experience with the Z370 but I have used many Lenovos and nearly all of them have internal usb cameras driven by uvcvideo. Your post suggests that 12.10 drove the webcam. You might try to boot a live usb for 12.10 or for some older releases (old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases) to see if the webcam works on those. If so, use dmesg to figure out what driver is being used.

[Rohit Rao]

Hey Martin. Thanks for your help. But it doesn't seem to be working with 16.10 and 12.10. I still get the same error in cheese.

[Martin W]

But did it used to work with any Ubuntu? If not, perhaps the cam is not uvc compliant. You could try v4l drivers using the command mplayer -cache 128 -tv driver=v4l2:width=640:height=480 -vo xv tv://. You may need sudo install mplayer, if you don't have that package already.

[Rohit Rao]

This is what I get. rohit@rohit-rao:~$ mplayer -cache 128 -tv driver=v412:width=640:height=480 -vo xv tv:// Creating config file: /home/rohit/.mplayer/config MPlayer 1.3.0 (Debian), built with gcc-7 (C) 2000-2016 MPlayer Team do_connect: could not connect to socket connect: No such file or directory Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control. Playing tv://. Cache fill: 0.00% (0 bytes) TV file format detected. No such driver: v412 Exiting... (End of file)

[Rohit Rao]

Thanks for your reply. I tried this but I get a message in lots of websites saying a webcam/camera is not connected or the camera is disconnected. I never get a dialogue box popping up.