Score:2

Intel MIPI Camera stopped working after last update (XPS 13 9320)

cn flag

I got a Dell XPS 13 9320 in July, I put Ubuntu 22.04 on it and it was working fine for a few months now.

When installing in July, I followed the section Dell XPS 9320 on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Dell to have the webcam to work.

Last week, I did an update of several packages (without looking closely on what I got, just clicking 'update all') and now the webcam stopped working.

At first, it was just google meet that did not find the camera, but Cheese was still finding it if launched with sudo. When I googled it, I found this page on Dell website that I followed (this is where the sudo cheese came from) https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/fr-fr/000203830/webcam-is-not-detected-on-xps-13-plus-9320-laptops-running-ubuntu-22-04?lang=en.

But as it didn't fix for google meet, I went back to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Dell and tried to apply again the guide, as I've seen it was slightly updated also.

Then I tried to change the version of the packages with the different give ppa, remove then, reinstall them, and now nothing works anymore :(

The packages I played with are:

  • oem-somerville-tentacool-meta
  • libcamhal-common
  • libcamhal-ipu6ep-common
  • libipu6ep
  • gstreamer1.0-icamera (this one was installed, but I'm not able to download it again since I uninstalled it)

My last chance was to remove all ppa and specific packages, then to install again oem-somerville-tentacool-meta from official repo (not from ppa) and to do several full-upgrades with synaptics. But it did not work.

When I go to https://webcamtests.com/ the only device is 'Dummy video device (0x0000)'.

Here is the list of the device I got:

$ v4l2-ctl --list-devices
ipu6 (PCI:pci:pci0000:00):
    /dev/video1

ipu6 (pci:pci0000:00):
    /dev/media0

Dummy video device (0x0000) (platform:v4l2loopback-000):
    /dev/video0

I really don't know how to get back my cam working ;(

David avatar
cn flag
Not having a clue what played with means there is no way to make any suggestions.
JR Utily avatar
cn flag
@David well, I'm in a state I would reach normally if I would install 22.04 on a new Xps 9320 today with current repository and wiki state. I didn't touched any config files, only ppa and packages, and I'm up-to-date to all the available ones.
David avatar
cn flag
There is no mention in your question of installing any PPA s. What PPA s did you install what packages did you install. Without details next to impossible to offer any help.
JR Utily avatar
cn flag
I just edited to add more source
Score:1
cn flag

today there was another automatic update from Ubuntu, and the webcam broke again :(

I fixed it by applying that:

# remove the lib that is not ipu6ep
sudo aptitude install libcamhal0-
# downgrade to old versions
sudo aptitude install libipu6ep=0~git202204010644.0797f74-1~ubuntu22.04.1

sudo aptitude install gstreamer1.0-icamera=0~git202207130901.4d4293d~ubuntu22.04.2 libgsticamerainterface-1.0-1=0~git202207130901.4d4293d~ubuntu22.04.2

Score:1
cn flag

I found the solution !!!

Dell Support asked me to test with a live-ubuntu before they does an intervention. So I did it, but it was not possible to do a real test, as the procedure needs to restart after install, and that restarting on a live session deletes all modifications.

but

I kept the list of packages detected to be added by the full-upgrade in the procedure, and seen that gstreamer1.0-icamera (the one I could not install anymore) was part of it.

So, after, I came back to my real session and tried again to install gstreamer1.0-icamera. I discovered that the error message with apt were not the same as the one with synaptic (that I use generally to have an easier experience in manipulating the package).

  • Synaptic error: "the package is listed but can not be installed, maybe due to change in repository list"
  • apt error: "the package need dependency libgsticamerainterface-1.0-1 in version 0~git202207130901.4d4293d~ubuntu22.04.2 but the one installed is 0~git2022yyyyyyyyyy~ubuntu22.04.17. Unable to correct problems, defective packages are in "keep as is" mode."

(sorry for the approximate messages, I have reboot since, and the messages were in French so the exact term in English are certainly not these...)

So I search about this "keep as is" error and found that aptitude is able to manage it better than the others apt interfaces.

sudo apt install aptitude
sudo aptitude install gstreamer1.0-icamera

... tells the same error, and ask if doing nothing is a good solution [y/n/?]
ANSWER NO

... tells that it can try to install former version of libgsticamerainterface-1.0-1 instead [y/n/?]
ANSWER YES

Then I reboot, and after that my webcam was working again. In synaptic, I can now see just one version available of libgsticamerainterface-1.0-1. So I don't know how and why this other version (~ubuntu22.04.17) arrived in my system, but this was the cause of all this mess.

Score:0
sy flag

First of all, you need to check if it is the Intel MIPI camera stack issue or not.

You can execute sudo gst-launch-1.0 icamerasrc ! autovideosink to confirm if it is the Intel MIPI camera stack issue or not.

If there is no problem on the Intel MIPI camera stack itself, sudo gst-launch-1.0 icamerasrc ! autovideosink should work for you.

My Dell XPS 13 9320 can show the camera content by sudo gst-launch-1.0 icamerasrc ! autovideosink just after the installation of Ubuntu 22.04 and the whole system has been upgraded by Software Updater.

https://webcamtests.com/ works with Google Chrome 116.0.5845.96 and Mozilla Firefox 116.0.2.

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