Camera on a Toshiba L850 Satellite laptop, Fedora 17.

[Rick Stevens]

On 03/06/2014 01:54 PM, Rolf Turner issued this missive:
>
> I have a Toshiba Satellite L850 laptop.  Recently I attempted to make
> use of "Google Hangouts" for communicating with some colleagues.  When I
> attempted to start a "video hangout" I was informed that the "device"
> was not working and that I appeared *not* to have a camera.  (After some
> appropriate clicking I got a message to the effect "Looks like your
> camera isn't working properly.")
>
> I had never tried to do anything involving camera facilities before (I'm
> not usually that sort of bear) but I had just assumed that there was a
> camera in the machine.  There *is* a lens in the lid, just above the
> screen. Furthermore, according to Toshiba's website, this laptop has a 1
> megapixel webcam built in.
>
> So:  How can I get the damned thing to "work properly"?  Is there
> something I need to do to switch it on?  Does it need "drivers"
> installed?  If so, do there exist drivers that will work under Linux,
> specifically under Fedora 17?
>
> Please try not to be *too* cryptic in your responses!  There are many
> lacunae in my knowledge and many acronyms and pieces of jargon bewilder me!
>
> Thanks for any help and advice.

Most laptop cameras are internally attached to one of the USB buses
in your machine, so as the root user you could try an "lsusb" and see
if your camera appears in that list. On my Dell:

[root at golem4 ~]# lsusb
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 8087:07d9 Intel Corp.
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 8086:0189 Intel Corp.
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 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 1bcf:2980 Sunplus Innovation Technology Inc.
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

The "Sunplus" item is my webcam.

See if you have an application called "Cheese" on your desktop. On
XFCE, it's "Applications Menu->Multimedia->Cheese". That's a fairly
lightweight camera application and will tell you if the camera is
working or not. If it is working, then there may be an issue with
Hangouts working with your machine (although it _should_ just use the
/dev/video0 device by default).

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- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital    ricks at alldigital.com -
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