35 replies to this topic

[AgentEntropy]

Due to some unrelated problems I had to restore my Eee (that's what I get for messing around too much when I know so little about Linux; still not sure what I did exactly). After the restore everything was back to normal, except the webcam doesn't work quite right. Instead of seeing my ugly mug staring back out at me I only get an empty black box. The indicator light for the webcam turns on, and the Webcam app chugs along as if nothing at all is the matter, but there is no image. When I check the BIOS setting for it I found it was disabled. I immediately enabled it (being sure to save changes on my way out of the BIOS) but had the exact same issue. Interestingly enough, every time I try this I go back into the BIOS to find that the camera has once again been disabled. At this point I'm stuck. I have no clue how I might be able to fix this, short of trying another full restore (which I'd rather not do, if it can be avoided). Anyone have any idea how to fix this?

[JazzplayerL9]

Have you tried saving that setting in the BIOS, booting up and then immediately rebooting again and going into the BIOS to check and see if it's still set? I'm just wondering if opening the software might be doing anything (I really don't think it is, but it's what I'd do first). If it changes without opening the software...then it's the BIOS not saving the settings when you exit and it's either a bug or something that happened during the restore. Second step in that case would be to restore it again and try once more. If a restore doesn't work then you know for sure it's a BIOS bug and you might have to wait till the next BIOS revision. I don't hear many other people having this problem, so I think it might've been something that happened during the restore.

In the case it doesn't switch back to disable following the reboot without accessing the software...then you know it's a software issue and then I'd still do a full restore to make sure...in the case that didn't work...wait for a software revision, they happen frequently on popular programs like this.

[AgentEntropy]

Excellent advice Jazz. I'm almost ashamed I didn't think of it myself (though it's really what I get for troubleshooting when I'm this tired [I actually yawned right when I typed that]).

If I enable it in the BIOS, boot up, then immediately reboot and go back into the BIOS it still shows the camera as enabled. It would appear the webcam app itself is causing the issue. Anyone else have any ideas? I just spent the last day and a half setting everything back up after the last restore, I'd hate to do another one. I suppose if no other suggestions are forthcoming I'll have to give the restore a try though.

[DonkeyBeliever]

@AgentEntropy

Are you just in simple desktop mode? or do you have Advanced mode enabled? If you at least have access to a terminal try to run:

ucview

and see if you get your camera running?

[AgentEntropy]

@DonkeyBeliever

Launching it from terminal just takes me to the same thing as launching it from the desktop (Easy Mode, btw). But that does show me something that might help someone more knowledgeable that myself discover a solution. The last line in the terminal after launching the app says:

Quote

** Message: FAILED to create display with I420 format

[DonkeyBeliever]

Quote

@DonkeyBeliever

Launching it from terminal just takes me to the same thing as launching it from the desktop (Easy Mode, btw). But that does show me something that might help someone more knowledgeable that myself discover a solution. The last line in the terminal after launching the app says:

Quote

** Message: FAILED to create display with I420 format

Hrm, I can't seem to find too much documentation for ucviewer, have you perhaps tried uninstalling and reinstalling ucviewer to see if that fixes anything? I'd hate to see you try to do a full system restore again. And you double checked to see that it was enabled in the BIOS eh?

[AgentEntropy]

Well an apt-get remove and an apt-get install later and it's gone from bad to worse (not your fault though, it was an excellent suggestion). Now the webcam app won't launch at all. Click on it and I get an hourglass for a few seconds and then nothing. Going from terminal gets me the message

Quote

.unicap exists

and then it just sits there daring me to wait for likely unending amounts of time. Interestingly enough if I type "sudo bash" and then try to launch ucview i get a different message.

Quote

.unicap does not exist
Setting defaults for image and video paths...

I don't know enough about Linux to know why that would give different results, but there it is. At this point I think I'm just going to do a restore. Shouldn't actually take too long to set everything up again. Last time it took me so long because I was working thru Chuck and Heroes, and then the next day finishing up while I was actually at work. With a full day off I should have it restored and configured shortly. Thanks for the help though.

[AgentEntropy]

Well goody. I'm still getting the exact same issue I started with after a complete restore. I haven't made any modifications to the Eee other than enabling the camera in the BIOS but I'm still getting nothing but a big black box instead of a normal image in the webcam app. And launching the webcam app causes the camera to be disabled in the BIOS on the next boot up. Anyone else have any ideas or am I just gonna have to exchange it?

[DonkeyBeliever]

Quote

Well goody. I'm still getting the exact same issue I started with after a complete restore. I haven't made any modifications to the Eee other than enabling the camera in the BIOS but I'm still getting nothing but a big black box instead of a normal image in the webcam app. And launching the webcam app causes the camera to be disabled in the BIOS on the next boot up. Anyone else have any ideas or am I just gonna have to exchange it?

Sorry to hear about you uninstall/reinstall woes, I'm suprised it nuked it like that. I'm thinking maybe the config is broken could you open a Terminal and execute the following command for me?

less /etc/ucview/default.ini

that should pull up the default.ini in a little terminal window, see if the camera config is there?

Here is my default.ini I haven't made any changes and my camera works

Quote

[Device]
Identifier=UVC Camera (eb1a:2761) (0000:00:1d.7)

[VideoFormat]
Identifier=YUV 4:2:2 (UYVY) ( UYVY )
FourCC=1498831189
Width=320
Height=240

[Prop-Brightness]
Value=128
FlagsLo=1
FlagsHi=0

[Prop-Contrast]
Value=16
FlagsLo=1
FlagsHi=0

[Prop-Saturation]
Value=18
FlagsLo=1
FlagsHi=0

[Prop-Gamma]
Value=32
FlagsLo=1
FlagsHi=0

[Prop-Power Line Frequency]
Value=2
FlagsLo=1
FlagsHi=0

[Prop-Sharpness]
Value=0
FlagsLo=1
FlagsHi=0

[Prop-Exposure, Auto]
Value=4
FlagsLo=1
FlagsHi=0

[Prop-White Balance Temperature, Auto]
Value=1
FlagsLo=1
FlagsHi=0

[Prop-White Balance Temperature]
Value=128
FlagsLo=1
FlagsHi=0

[Prop-video source]
Menu=Camera 1
FlagsLo=1
FlagsHi=0

Edited by DonkeyBeliever, 07 November 2007 - 07:38 PM.

[AgentEntropy]

Well our default.ini files match up, so I don't think that's it. But I found something else. I can't believe I didn't think of this before. On the Settings tab there is a Diagnostic Tools app. When I use it to test the webcam I get a message asking me to "Plug in your webcam!" and an indicator that the test "Failed". Could this just be a hardware problem?

Edited by AgentEntropy, 07 November 2007 - 07:56 PM.

[DonkeyBeliever]

Hrm that does sound odd, I'd talk to ASUS, :( The thing that makes me kinda wonder is that you said it worked before eh? random hardware failures are pretty uncommon

Edited by DonkeyBeliever, 08 November 2007 - 01:51 AM.

[AgentEntropy]

Yes, before my initial restore it had been working without any problems. The issue that prompted my initial restore is that I somehow did something that prevented it from booting properly. It would get all the way to the point that it showed the X mouse pointer in the ceneter of a black screen then it would blink out and go back to point that it shows the multi-colored Intel text on the top of the screen. It would just keep cycling thru that until I hard powered off. I restored it and everything else seemed to worked perfectly, but the webcam never worked again after that. I can't imagine I did anything to the webcam that a full restore wouldn't have fixed, but who knows. I suppose I'll give Asus a call and see what they say.

[Masin]

Quote

Yes, before my initial restore it had been working without any problems. The issue that prompted my initial restore is that I somehow did something that prevented it from booting properly. It would get all the way to the point that it showed the X mouse pointer in the ceneter of a black screen then it would blink out and go back to point that it shows the multi-colored Intel text on the top of the screen. It would just keep cycling thru that until I hard powered off. I restored it and everything else seemed to worked perfectly, but the webcam never worked again after that. I can't imagine I did anything to the webcam that a full restore wouldn't have fixed, but who knows. I suppose I'll give Asus a call and see what they say.

I don't know what is happening to the webcam (I think I need to check it out..) because I had the exact same problem of the "auto selfreboot loop syndrome" as you do yesterday while I was messing with the startsimple.sh shell script. Was that what caused the problem for you too?

I finally found out the root cause of this self rebooting problem... I cut and pasted the shell script from a windows machine then transferred it to the EEE, and that was what caused it. The line terminator for a dos/window machine is \r\n, for unix/linux it's \r, and the OS couldn't read the shell script properly when starting up and caused that reboot issue.

At the end I used a boot CD boot up the eee and change the script back to just using \r and all was fine.. but I have not tested the webcam ....!

[AgentEntropy]

Called Asus. The person I spoke to sounded even less knowledgeable about Linux that I am (and I'll readily admit I'm a Linux noob). I explained the situation and everything I'd done to try to fix the problem. He recommended that I try "apt-get upgrade" and call back if it doesn't work. I don't honestly hold out any hope of it fixing it (I'm somewhat convinced it's a hardware issue) but I've got the upgrade running right now. I'll post again when it finishes.

**Edit** Well it's completed and I rebooted for good measure, but no change to the webcam issue. Time to call back I suppose.

**Second Edit** Called back. At this point they are recommending replacing the device. Too bad. I'll miss it while it's gone.

Edited by AgentEntropy, 07 November 2007 - 09:22 PM.

[mkrishnan]

I am having this problem also now -- my webcam was working, and after a system restore, it is likewise now not working.... Another system restore, as well as reflashing the BIOS with the version that comes up in the easy mode updater (0401 I believe), as well as using the reset button on the bottom, all did nothing for this.

It seems unlikely that both of our Eee's got taken down by a hardware problem over the course of a restore, but I guess anything is possible? :(

I haven't tried a DVD restore yet (or more likely a USB key restore)... I would have to figure out how I could do that, but that might be a possibility....

[mkrishnan]

Update on me.... odd.

My camera stopped working, as mentioned above, after a system restore, as far as I can tell. Black box in Skype, in the Webcam app, the green light briefly but also black box. In the diagnostic tool, FAIL.

Trying to remove and re-install the camera package did nothing, although, interestingly, removing it with remove (which leaves behind config data) stated that it would free about 120k. That's odd, since usually it throws up a zero for packages that are on the read partition. I wonder what that means.

Several attempts to reflash the BIOS, reset BIOS settings, and restore again did nothing.

I spent some time today playing with Ubuntu ... man, when it has native drivers, Ubuntu 8.x is going to be teh r0XX3rz on this thing! Ubuntu's special effects are very usable, etc. I still think some things in Ubuntu are very not-straightforward, like configuring networks, when they could easily be so....

Anyway, Ubuntu did not autodetect my camera for me as it did for others. It was not available in test apps like camorama. Although it seemed to be detected in hardware profile, no luck in getting anything to use it (live flash image, persistent mode didn't seem to be working, and I'm not sure why).

Then, I booted back up in easy mode Xandros, and weirdly, my cam works now. :o :D

Also, in hindsight, I don't think the light on my cam was working before all this... I think all this argues for bugginess in the Asus distribution, BIOS included, but I'm going to keep exploring and monitoring.

The point is, mine is working again, but I'm not sure I can provide any useful info to get yours working!!! :(

[AgentEntropy]

@ mkrishnan

Don't worry too much about helping me get mine fixed. It's already on its way back to New Egg for replacement. But definitely continue to post updates on your situation. I hate to be such a scientist about it, but it would be great if you could do a restore on it to try to recreate the issue, and then see if you can narrow down a fix. But I'd more than understand if you didn't want to risk it. :)

[mkrishnan]

The scientist in me agrees absolutely. The part of me, however, that wants to continue learning linux, is somewhat afraid of the amount of time it takes to re-do everything on every restore. :D

Seriously, when I get stuff like this to toy on, I always end up wanting to do one or two restores before I settle down (e.g. my Axim), because I go and install something that makes it unstable. Whatever is wrong does need to be fixed by Asus, since the restore mechanism is an amazing idea, unless it doesn't work! :p

[arne]

You do not need to enable the cam in the BIOS; the wrapper script which calls ucview enables the camera via ACPI.

Do a 'cat /usr/bin/ucview' to see how it does this ( some simple 'echo' commands ).

If you have this issue again you can also do:
---------
rmmod uvcvideo
modprobe uvcvideo trace=0xfff
---------

You will then get output from the camera driver if you enter 'dmesg'


/Arne

[ozien]

*boggle* I'm completely baffled by this, but it seems important enough to share...

I have been reading this thread with some interest, as I too had the dreaded no webcam problem after tinkering with things. Nothing, including a complete restore, fixed the problem. However, while fiddling around with getting another OS on to my EEE, I got as far as making a USB stick think it was a Windows 98 emergency boot disk. (I'm trying to see if I can install WinXP and modify all those files without having to burn a new CD - just boot to DOS prompt and run the installer from the I386 directory...but that's a story for another time perhaps.) I successfully booted to a DOS prompt off this keychain.

Anyway, as I had a lot more work to do before trying to install WinXP, I booted Linux back up to play with my new toy some more. Remembering the poster that said their webcam worked again after booting Ubuntu, I tried the Webcam again just on a whim. Lo, the camera doeth work again!

My inference from this? Try to boot *anything* other than the native OS to fix the problem! Get a USB floppy drive and boot a Windows boot disk. Make a keychain installation of DSL or some other Linux and boot from that.

Should this method work? Frankly, I don't see how or why. Does it work? Apparently so... It would be nice if we could get additional verification on this, or if other steps are needed (like making sure the camera is ON in the BIOS - I think I turned it back on, but I don't remember now. I wasn't paying too much attention, since I really don't care if the camera works or not.)

EDIT typos

Edited by ozien, 12 November 2007 - 03:23 AM.