Popular Guides
Laptop Guides at
LinLap.com
Welcome to Linux Wiki Guides
Setting up your webcam under SuSE-OpenSuSE 11.0
Author(s)
Bill Giannikos
Introduction
This guide will help you set up your webcam under SuSE and OpenSuSE 11.0. SuSE doesn't include the main drivers used by most webcams so we will be installing these drivers.
Most webcams are covered by either the Gspca or Linux-uvc driver, we will be covering both.
Notes
While this guide is mainly focused to laptop users there isn't any difference for desktop users.
Both the Gspca and Linux-uvc drivers are in a development stage. This means the drivers are not yet considered fully stable and should be installed with caution. This is especially true for the Linux-uvc driver as it is still listed as being in alpha stage.
Prerequisites
You should run a full update for your installation to ensure you have all the latest packages installed.
Determining the driver to use
In Linux there are 2 different drivers which covers the majority of webcams available, these are the Gspca or Linux-uvc driver. You will need to determine which is the correct driver to install. If you are not sure which webcam you have you can make use of the 'lspci' and 'lsusb' commands to print a list of devices on your system.
After determining your webcam type you need to see which driver supports your webcam. Here is a list of webcams supported by the Gspca driver and here is a list of webcams supported by the linux-uvc driver.
If you webcam doesn't appear on either list then it's possible your webcam isn't supported. If you like you can just try installing both drivers anyway and see how you go.
Installing the latest Gspca driver
In this section we will be detailing the procedure of installing the latest Gspca driver for SuSE-OpenSuSE 11.0.
1. Download the latest drivers from http://mxhaard.free.fr/download.html. You want to download the latest gspcav1 driver, not the older spca5xx. In this guide we are going to use gspcav1-20071224 as at the time of writing these are the current ones.
2. Load up a terminal window if you are in the graphic interface.
3. Switch to the root user by entering the command “su -” (without the quotes) and typing in your root password.
4. Type in the following to install gcc and the kernel headers:
yast -i gcc linux-kernel-headers kernel-headers kernel-source
5. Move to the /usr/src/ folder with:
cd /usr/src
6. Extract the contents of the file you downloaded with:
sudo tar -xzvf /path/to/gspcav1-20071224.tar.gz
Remember to replace the ”/path/to” in this command to the path of where your file is and change the filename to the version you downloaded
7. Move into the newly created folder with
cd gspcav1-20071224
8. Now start the building process with:
make
This will take a while.
9. And finally we install the driver with:
make install
10. Reboot your computer and the newer gspca driver will be used.
Installing the latest Linux-uvc driver
In this section we will be detailing the procedure of installing the latest Linux-uvc driver for SuSE-OpenSuSE 11.0.
1. Load up a terminal window if you are in the graphic interface.
2. Switch to the root user by entering the command “su -” (without the quotes) and typing in your root password.
3. Type in the following to install gcc, svn and the kernel headers:
yast -i gcc linux-kernel-headers kernel-headers kernel-source subversion
4. Move to the /usr/src/ folder with:
cd /usr/src
5. Download the latest driver with:
svn checkout svn://svn.berlios.de/linux-uvc/linux-uvc/trunk
6. Move into the newly created folder with
cd trunk
7. Now start the building process with:
make
This will take a while.
8. And finally we install the driver with:
make install
9. Reboot your computer and the newer linux-uvc driver will be used.
Discussion
a specific info is needed to the above message: I use a Dell srs premium sound. I preferred the OpenSUSE 11.3, 32-bit version instead of 64-version. So it is an i586, KDE kernel 4.4.4 “release 2”. The gcc 45 compiler is installed at minimum level already.
“a specific info is needed to the above message: I use a Dell srs premium sound. I preferred the OpenSUSE 11.3, 32-bit version instead of 64-version. So it is an i586, KDE kernel 4.4.4 “release 2”. The gcc 45 compiler is installed at minimum level already. ”
By Dell srs premium sound, you mean Dell Inspiron 1564 SRS Premium Sound?
KDE and kernel are different. By 4.4.4 i think you mean KDE release.
Checking kernel version is easy, just type
$ uname -a
The gcc version should be ok if you have a new installation.
My webcam doesn't work after the SUSE installation. I use OpenSuSE 11.3. I gave 'lsusb' cmd in a su window. The result was 'Microdia laptop integrated webcam 1.3M' , '/dev/input/event11' , 'device id: 222237' , 'kernel driver: uvcvideo'. Which are the values of operands existing in the below command ? I refer to this command:
yast -i gcc linux-kernel-headers kernel-headers kernel-source subversion
I'm not a gcc (C++) developer!
Last question: can you attach in the next OpenSuSE kernels (11.3, 11.4 …) the most popular drivers belonging to the uvcvideo class drivers ? I think the kernel's size doesn't increase dramatically.
The description you made is valid for kernels 2.6.18 and under (Maybe some above.), when you try to compile it with newer versions, you get errors. There are some patches but in my case that didn't work.
But if you have a more recently kernel 2.6.27 or above, then, gspca webcam code has been fused with the kernel, so webcam is supported directly and you just need the right packages.
In my case, i'm running OpenSusse 11.1, i installed the following packages:
kernel-default
kernel-default-base
kernel-default-devel
kernel-source
kernel-syms
linux-kernel-headers
webcam-gspca2-kmp-default
for the kernel 2.6.31. Yast builds automatically the webcam support.
Some applications like skype 2.0.1.81 will need v4l, so, i installed:
libv4l
libv4l-devel
v4l-conf
v4l-tools
Aditionally, just for the first tests, i installed:
gqcam
Cheers.
Have you tried plugging it in ?
i installed the Suse 11. but the webcam is not working. can anybody have some idea about it…………..