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I have bought myself a HP Pavilion DM1 to go traveling with, which has Ubuntu 14.04.1 on it, but now (a day before I leave for africa!) I realize the webcam isn't being recognized at all. I'm guessing I need to figure out how to put the driver for it on the machine.

My webcam works on cheese, so it is being detected, just not on skype or websites.

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  • instrall the v4l2loopback-dkms package: sudo apt-get install v4l2loopback-dkms
    – user308564
    Aug 27, 2014 at 11:31
  • @user308564 the webcam works, just not on skype
    – Braiam
    Aug 27, 2014 at 12:10
  • Add the output of lsusb to your question.
    – Braiam
    Aug 27, 2014 at 12:11
  • @Braiam v4l2loopback-dkms needs to transfer the video for web applications.
    – user308564
    Aug 27, 2014 at 12:40

1 Answer 1

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There is a (more or less) known problem with some 64bit drivers. On my system I could solve it this way:

  1. Install (if needed) the compatibility layers for webcam at 32bit:

     sudo apt-get install  libv4l-0:i386
    
  2. Prepare this script:

    #!/bin/bash
    #
    export LD_PRELOAD="/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libv4l/v4l2convert.so"
    export PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60
    export QT_PLUGIN_PATH="/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/qt4/plugins"
    exec skype &
    
  3. Call it "myskype" or whatever, make it executable, and run it instead of skype from a terminal emulator.

The three environment variables fix a couple of bug present in 64bit version of skype or ubuntu, depending on who you are speaking with.

As an alternative, you can edit /usr/share/application/skype.desktop and change the line where you find:

Exec=env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60 skype %U

to

Exec=env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60 LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libv4l/v4l2convert.so QT_PLUGIN_PATH=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/qt4/plugins skype %U

(all in one line).

Caveats:

  1. If it doesn't work, try to change v4l2convert.so to v4l1convert.so .

  2. Check the real paths of the *.so files on your system (you need the 32bit ones; either in i386 or lib32 directories).

  3. On all my systems minus 1 the QT_PLUGIN_PATH variable is not needed.

  4. The PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC variable is badly needed or you lose the audio.

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