Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 51398
OV511+ webcam not working after upgrading to 2.4.3-12
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:35:43 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98) Description of problem: Used a OV511+ USB webcam with RH7.1 on kernel 2.4.2-2. This works OK. After upgrading my kernel with up2date to 2.4.3-12, the webcam is still recognized, but gives only blackish and greenish blocked images, not related to anything the camera sees. How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Reboot system 2. Select old kernel in Lilo (2.4.2-2) 3. Webcam is working 4. Reboot system 5. Select new kernel in Lilo (2.4.3-12) 6. Webcam gives no images Actual Results: During bootup there seems to be no difference in the loading of modules (usb, usb-ohci, hub and ov511), but when an image is captured when booted the 2.4.2-2 kernel I get quite nice images and when an image is captured when booting the 2.4.3-12 kernel, I get blocked images (black/green). These blocked images do not seem to have any relation to what the camera sees (totally black or a lot of light keep generating the same blocked images). Expected Results: The cam should be working also in kernel 2.4.3-12 Additional info: Using a P200MMX without a USB controller on-board. Using a PCI-USB controller (Sitecom) based on a OPti-chip. Using two PCI-NIC's. Both the NIC's and the USB-controller share the same interrupt, but both NIC's are working OK.
Please tell what webcam software is used. Xawtv in particular is troublesome, I have to run patched versions with bigger initial sync timeout. By a miracle it works with some kernel versions.
I use the 'webcam' software which is included in the xawtv-package.
Created attachment 28153 [details] Fix for xawtv/webcam for USB cameras
Oops, please ignore that attachement. Kraxel had it integrated into current xawtv (I just checked the SRPM in 7.2 tree - pure xawtv-3.54).
I upgraded to xawtv-3.54-2 (it did cost me quite some time to find that rpm. What is the usual place to find things like this? - I'm quite a newbie), but the result is still the same. You can take a look at: http://members.home.nl/fbodewes/webcam/demo.jpg to see a sample image.
My feeling is that is has something to do with the USB or OV511 part.... I made three other pictures to do some comparison: http://members.home.nl/fbodewes/webcam/one.jpg 2.4.2-2 kernel xawtv 3.54-2) http://members.home.nl/fbodewes/webcam/two.jpg 2.4.2-2 kernel xawtv 3.54-4) http://members.home.nl/fbodewes/webcam/three.jpg 2.4.3-12 kernel xawtv 3.54-4) In the latest picture, you could still see some correct info (if you look hard)...
I cannot reproduce the blocky effect so far, but the image is incorrectly green for 2.4.3-12. Something is fishy - investigating. The block effect looks like a compression (which, naturally, is not supported by Linux). Perhaps 2.4.3-12 initializes more (or less), and trips a compression mode in the particular webcam. Requestor please attach a copy of /proc/bus/usb/devices.
OK. The green hue disappears if webcam runs for a few frames. I saw that effect before and it seems unrelated. 640x480 works. I would like to see .webcamrc (don't forget to remove any FTP passowrds) - in addition to /proc/bus/usb/devices.
Created attachment 28394 [details] Cusomer example (local copy)
Created attachment 28395 [details] Bad colors at the start of a sequence
Differences from customer config (test rig at Cheasapike) 1. IRQ not shared 2. UHCI instead of OHCI P6/233MMX SMP - same
Created attachment 28396 [details] Possibly relevant differences
Created attachment 28402 [details] copy of /proc/bus/usb/devices
Created attachment 28403 [details] copy of .webcamrc
Hmm, might be of influence: I did not mention the type of webcam before. It is a Trust webc@m 300.
Can you do self-compiled kernels with changes for testing, or do you need a binary RPM?
Created attachment 28418 [details] ISO alignment for 32 in ohci
Current hypotesis: shift from virt_to_bus to proper PCI macros uncovered an alignment problem in ohci. The spec says ISO TDs must be aligned on 32 (all other TDs are aligned on 16).
Hmm, having troubles compiling modules, kernel compiles OK, RPM would be easy
Can you try kernel-2.4.7-2.i386.rpm from ftp.redhat.com, /pub/redhat/linux/rawhide/i386/RedHat/RPMS ?
Frank, I'm needinfo-ing the bug because I am waiting the report of Rawhide's kernel from you.
Sorry for not replying earlier, I have been on quite a long holiday in the outback of Australia and I haven't seen a computer for quite a while....... I tried to find kernel-2.4.7-2.i386.rpm, but I only found kernel-2.4.9- 0.18.i386.rpm. I tried to install, but it failed some dependecies. Should I try the 2.4.9 version (and resolve the dependencies) or should I try to get the 2.4.7 version?
Force the installation on 2.4.9. It must not harm your existing kernels anyways. The rpm install only stores it into /boot and /lib/modules. After than you add it to /etc/lilo.conf manually. The only danger is to make sure you do not run out of space in /boot.
Pete, The webcam is working with the new kernel! Thanks for your patience and support. Do you know wat caused the problem? Frank
The attached fix for ISO alignment was integrated into mainstream Linux. Taking the latest Rawhide was a testing action. Officially we suggest to use RHN and up2date to fetch latest kernels for the supported distribution. The latest 7.1 update today is still 2.4.3-12, so you either have to wait until a 2.4.7 based update rolls out for 7.1, or take rawhide, or download 2.4.3-12 SRPM, apply the fix usb.243-12.iso_align.diff, and recompile. Most of the users prefer not to bother with recompiles and wait for updates.