Disk layout query

Story: Asus 9 inch NetbookTotal Replies: 46
Author Content
d0nk3y

Feb 01, 2010
11:04 PM EDT
Hey there TA!

This sounds like an EeePC 900 series like I have.

My one actually has two SSD's - one 4Gb and one 16Gb (hence the C: and D:).

An important difference between the two however, is that the 4Gb one is markedly faster than the 16Gb one. To have the system installed into the 16Gb one will make the system quite a lot slower than it need be.

I use the 4Gb one for / and then mount the 16Gb one as /home. Nice and simple, fast boot and shutdown (I use Ubuntu NBR too) and plenty of space for Firefly videos. ;-)

tracyanne

Feb 02, 2010
12:35 AM EDT
Thanks D0nk3y, I'll keep that in mind.
tracyanne

Mar 22, 2010
5:10 PM EDT
@d0nk3y

I'm having a problem with the netbook, my client finally reteurned it yesterday. It seems to forget where the boot files are, and only boots from cold (that is after being shut down for more than a few minutes) if you select the boot image from the boot menu. Doing this is sub optimal for my client.

gus3

Mar 22, 2010
7:44 PM EDT
Quoting:The one thing that Mac and Windows do... is offer continually updated applications on a stable base.
"Windows" and "stable" don't belong in the same sentence. Also, I'm having difficulty believing that "Mac" belongs there.
Sander_Marechal

Mar 23, 2010
4:28 AM EDT
@Gus: Looks like you replied in the wrong thread!
gus3

Mar 23, 2010
12:11 PM EDT
Holy cow.

Well, there's a first time for everything.
tracyanne

Mar 23, 2010
5:42 PM EDT
I think I've solved the problem I was having.

I simply installed again with a separate boot partition. It seems to work just fine now, except the camera doesn't seem to work.

Does anyone know anything about the "Install operating system" setting in the device's BIOS?
gus3

Mar 23, 2010
5:54 PM EDT
Yes, it can't be set for Linux, during install or after first boot. IIRC, it's a Windows-only doohickey, having to do with ACPI device enumeration.
tracyanne

Mar 24, 2010
9:29 AM EDT
Has anyone had any problems with the camera, or know of any problems with the camera? I can't get any images in Cheese or Skype(in testmode), yet the camera appears to be on.
Sander_Marechal

Mar 24, 2010
10:33 AM EDT
The camera worked fine when I had Ubuntu 9.10 on my netbook. Are you sure that your user has permission to read from the decive? IIRC in Ubuntu there's a separate permission setting (under System->Administration->Users&Groups->...) that you need to set to be able to use the camera. It's default on for the primary user but off for the rest.
tracyanne

Mar 24, 2010
4:34 PM EDT
this is the primary user

SO I compared the permissions for this user on this machine with the permissions for my primary user on my laptop, they are the same.

if I run Cheese from the command line I get an error message

Quoting: libv4l2: error turning on stream: Input/output error
jdixon

Mar 24, 2010
7:02 PM EDT
Well, TA, the first step is to find out whether the camera is being recognized and the driver loaded. A dmesg and an lsmod should show you that. You may have already done this, of course.
gus3

Mar 24, 2010
7:17 PM EDT
Also, "strace" is your friend. It will show you the exact error that's coming back from the kernel driver.
tracyanne

Mar 25, 2010
12:36 AM EDT
They don't tell me much more than I already know, strace output means nothing to me, I simply don't know what I'm looking for.
Sander_Marechal

Mar 25, 2010
6:05 AM EDT
tracyanne, can you put the strace output on e.g. pastebin.com? I (and I suppose gus as well) will have a look at it.
tracyanne

Mar 25, 2010
8:14 AM EDT
it's at http://pastebin.com/zfJSN8A7 thanks
gus3

Mar 25, 2010
10:25 AM EDT
FWIW: It's trying to run a program named "postr", but it can't find it in the $PATH. (That's just for updating Flickr pics.)

It looks like there's a GStreamer error coming out on stderr. Towards the end there's a set of lines looking like:

Quoting:write(2, "\n(cheese:4850): GStreamer-CRITIC"..., 106) = 106
What are the messages on stderr?
Sander_Marechal

Mar 25, 2010
10:43 AM EDT
What gus said. Try running `cheese --verbose`. That should put a metric ton of info on your STDOUT. Put that on pastebin as well please.

Also, paste the output of `gst-inspect` or `gst-inspect-0.10` (whichever you have. Debian and derivatives have the latter because they can support multiple different GStreamers)
tracyanne

Mar 25, 2010
5:30 PM EDT
dennis@sandra:~$ cheese --verbose Cheese 2.28.1 Probing devices with HAL... Found device 04f2:b071, getting capabilities... Detected v4l2 device: CNF7129 Driver: uvcvideo, version: 256 Capabilities: 0x04000001

Probing supported video formats... libv4l2: error turning on stream: Input/output error

tracyanne

Mar 25, 2010
6:30 PM EDT
that looks like it can't find the required codec, I'm sure I installed the extra codecs, unless that was the previous install, when I had boot problems, and only thought I did this time.
Sander_Marechal

Mar 25, 2010
7:45 PM EDT
Sure looks like a codec problem to me. Too bad that --verbose didn't output that GStreamer-CRITICAL error.

If installing extra codecs doesn't work, try logging the GStreamer debug information.

$ GST_DEBUG=3 cheese --verbose


Warning: GStreamer debugging output can be huge. Especially when using level 4 or 5 instead of 3. You'll want to pipe it into a file instead of filling STDOUT:

$ GST_DEBUG=3 cheese --verbose 2>&1 cheese.log
gus3

Mar 25, 2010
8:30 PM EDT
@Sander:

I think you mean:

$ GST_DEBUG=3 cheese --verbose >cheese.log 2>&1

But leave off the --verbose, let the program run as normal, and see what GST error comes back.
tracyanne

Mar 25, 2010
9:11 PM EDT
I'll check this out later today, thanks
jdixon

Mar 25, 2010
9:12 PM EDT
> that looks like it can't find the required codec...

Well, it's definitely got some problem with the video stream from the camera. While the camera is obviously powered on (else it wouldn't be being recognized), it's not even clear if there's any video output from what you're getting. :( Most likely there is and there's a problem with GStreamer though.
tracyanne

Mar 26, 2010
12:18 AM EDT
I have installed the codecs.

I also uninstalle gstreamer, and reinstalled it, that laso didn't work

I tdid this GST_DEBUG=3 cheese --verbose >cheese.log 2>&1 before the reinstall.

I'll plunk it up on that site tonight
tracyanne

Mar 26, 2010
10:47 PM EDT
I'm running XUbuntu 10.04 and this is what I get

Quoting: ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ cheese --verbose Cheese 2.29.92 ** Message: Error: Stream contains no data. gsttypefindelement.c(939): gst_type_find_element_activate (): /GstPlayBin2:play/GstURIDecodeBin:uridecodebin0/GstDecodeBin2:decodebin20/GstTypeFindElement:typefind: Can't typefind empty stream

totem-video-thumbnailer couldn't open file 'file:///home/ubuntu/Videos/Webcam/2010-03-27-023811.ogv' Reason: Stream contains no data..

** (cheese:3611): WARNING **: could not generate thumbnail for /home/ubuntu/Videos/Webcam/2010-03-27-023811.ogv (video/ogg)

libv4l2: error turning on stream: Input/output error
gus3

Mar 26, 2010
11:19 PM EDT
'/home/ubuntu/'? Is there such a directory? And, just as important, if there is such a dir, does user 'dennis' have permissions there?
tracyanne

Mar 27, 2010
2:24 AM EDT
It's a live CD
jdixon

Mar 27, 2010
8:48 AM EDT
> It's a live CD...

And the live CD works with your laptop? It's always possible you're fighting a hardware problem. The camera may have simply died and not be putting out video. I can't think of any obvious way to check that though.

We actually have an Asus EEE 900 (a, from memory) here, but it doesn't have a camera. :(
tracyanne

Mar 27, 2010
11:08 PM EDT
@JD, I'm almost convinced the problem is a hardware one. The camera should just work, with Linux, on the Asus 901, and the various reponses I get from different LiveCD (and USB key) versions I've tried, tend to suggest a faulty camera.
Sander_Marechal

Mar 28, 2010
5:12 AM EDT
Quoting:totem-video-thumbnailer couldn't open file 'file:///home/ubuntu/Videos/Webcam/2010-03-27-023811.ogv'


That's a really weird path for a V4L device. It should be something like /dev/videoX or something else in /dev. I'm tempted to think that this is a LiveCD issue. It looks almost like Cheese is trying to open a sample video file instead of a streaming camera device.

If you have a couple of Gig free I suggest that you install Ubuntu to your hard drive and try cheese again.
tracyanne

Mar 28, 2010
7:43 AM EDT
there was an empty ogv file at that location. It was created when I attempted to create a video. It's this behaviour that leads me to believe it's a faulty camera
Sander_Marechal

Mar 28, 2010
2:22 PM EDT
I know that you can use Cheese to record video. But what happens when you simply start Cheese? It should simply be displaying the camera feed from /dev, not record. When you simply start Cheese, do you get a picture?
tracyanne

Mar 28, 2010
4:53 PM EDT
When I start cheese I get no picture.

Depending on which Linux distro I boot into (from either a Live CD or a USB key) I get a blank screen or a test pattern.

If I try to take a photo, I get a empty file. in ~/Photos/Webcam or ~/Videos/Webcam

If I open Cheese after taking the photo or recording the video, I get that error message in "cheese --verbose" output.
Sander_Marechal

Mar 28, 2010
7:47 PM EDT
Let's start at the beginning. Remove those photos and videos (or do whatever you have to do to make Cheese play video from /dev instead of from recordings).

Start cheese with "GST_DEBUG=4 cheese --verbose >cheese.log 2>&1". Wait for the no picture or test pattern. Copy the logfile and close cheese (that order, so that the log isn't cluttered with the shutdown of cheese. GST_DEBUG set to 4 instead of 3 is very chatty). Post it to pastebin.

Hopefully that will tell us why you're not getting data of the V4L device in /dev. That's the main thing to solve. Without data you can't record. That's why your files are empty.

PS: Any idea about the camera make/manufacturer? Does lspci or lsusb say anything about that?
tracyanne

Mar 28, 2010
8:10 PM EDT
I'll get back to you at lunch time here
tracyanne

Mar 29, 2010
12:11 AM EDT
http://pastebin.com/qMi9uFKG
gus3

Mar 29, 2010
12:29 AM EDT
FWIW: The device opened successfully, but streaming from it failed. I see that the "libgstvideotestsrc.so" library was loaded, so I'm guessing that's the source of the test pattern.
Sander_Marechal

Mar 29, 2010
3:25 AM EDT
Yup. Line 38 is probing the v4l source for supported video formats. Line 39 is initialisation. In line 40-41 it fails reading from /dev/video0. So, at least we now know what device the camera is. Then it starts to rearrange the pipleine so it can add the videotestsource on line 99.

First things first, check the permissions on /dev/video0

I found two interesting articles, though both are for Ubuntu 9.04, not 9.10.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Webcam https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UVC

Ubuntu uses a the UVC standard and a generic UVC driver for webcams. That's sort of like the generic driver that USB storage devices use. One driver for a lot of different devices. Perhaps your camera is not UVC compatible. Perhaps you need to install a separate driver for it.

Any clues from lsusb/lspci and lsmod?
tracyanne

Mar 29, 2010
4:16 AM EDT
Quoting: dennis@sandra:~$ lsusb Bus 004 Device 002: ID 04f2:b071 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd 2.0M UVC WebCam / CNF7129 Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0951:1606 Kingston Technology Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
tracyanne

Mar 29, 2010
4:18 AM EDT
Quoting: dennis@sandra:~$ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 04) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 04) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 04) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 04) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 04) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 04) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 04) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 04) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 04) 00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 04) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d4) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 04) 00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) SATA Controller (rev 04) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 04) 01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01) 03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Attansic Technology Corp. L2 100 Mbit Ethernet Adapter (rev a0)
tracyanne

Mar 29, 2010
4:20 AM EDT
Quoting: dennis@sandra:~$ lsmod Module Size Used by aes_i586 8124 1 aes_generic 27484 1 aes_i586 binfmt_misc 8356 1 ppdev 6688 0 snd_hda_codec_realtek 203328 1 snd_hda_intel 27016 2 snd_hda_codec 75708 2 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel snd_hwdep 7200 1 snd_hda_codec snd_pcm_oss 37920 0 snd_mixer_oss 16028 1 snd_pcm_oss snd_pcm 75520 3 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_pcm_oss snd_seq_dummy 2656 0 iptable_filter 3100 0 ip_tables 11692 1 iptable_filter x_tables 16544 1 ip_tables snd_seq_oss 28576 0 joydev 10240 0 snd_seq_midi 6464 0 snd_rawmidi 22176 1 snd_seq_midi arc4 1660 2 snd_seq_midi_event 6940 2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi snd_seq 50224 6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event ecb 2524 2 snd_timer 22276 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq ath5k 125092 0 uvcvideo 59112 0 snd_seq_device 6920 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq mac80211 181140 1 ath5k psmouse 57332 0 videodev 36736 1 uvcvideo led_class 4096 1 ath5k ath 8060 1 ath5k v4l1_compat 14336 2 uvcvideo,videodev serio_raw 5280 0 snd 59204 16 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device cfg80211 93052 3 ath5k,mac80211,ath atl2 25844 0 soundcore 7264 1 snd lp 8964 0 snd_page_alloc 9252 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm eeepc_laptop 13936 0 parport 35340 2 ppdev,lp fbcon 36640 72 tileblit 2460 1 fbcon font 8124 1 fbcon bitblit 5372 1 fbcon softcursor 1756 1 bitblit i915 226760 3 drm 160672 3 i915 i2c_algo_bit 5760 1 i915 usb_storage 52800 0 intel_agp 27940 2 i915 agpgart 35020 2 drm,intel_agp video 19380 1 i915 output 2780 1 video
tracyanne

Mar 29, 2010
4:34 AM EDT
Just to make sure it's not a permissions issue I set permissions to 666.

chese --verbose returns

Quoting: dennis@sandra:~$ cheese --verbose Cheese 2.28.1 Probing devices with HAL... Found device 04f2:b071, getting capabilities... Detected v4l2 device: CNF7129 Driver: uvcvideo, version: 256 Capabilities: 0x04000001

Probing supported video formats... libv4l2: error turning on stream: Input/output error
gus3

Mar 29, 2010
9:26 AM EDT
Not the first time Ubuntu (and Linux) has had problems with the CNF7129. Here's a report that Launchpad has ignored since June last year:

[url=https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/ source/cheese/ bug/393617]https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/ source/cheese/ bug/393617[/url]
Sander_Marechal

Mar 29, 2010
9:50 AM EDT
Okay, that's strange. You may want to have a chat with the Gstreamer and/or the UVC driver developers.

From what I can tell, the camera is an UVC camera connected through an internal USB hub. It should work with the kernel uvcvideo driver. Your lsmod shows that the camera is detected and loaded. That's probably why it appears as /dev/video0 to start with.

Gstreamer/Cheese correctly identifies the camera. The GST_DEBUG=4 verbose output shows that the camera is correctly probed for it's capabilities (1280x800... nice :-) but somehow there is an error when the camera is turned on in order to read data from it.

The only thing I can think of now is to make another verbose dump from Cheese but this time with GST_DEBUG set to 5 instead of 4. Note that it's going to be even bigger that level 4 debugging, but perhaps that will finally show *why* it cannot open /dev/video0.

Another thing which may help is yet another strace. I think your previous strace was made when cheese tried to open the video file that was supposed to be in /home/ubuntu. I'd be interested in an strace that shows the failure when reading from /dev/video0.

I also found a couple of bugs related to this in Launchpad: [url=https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/ source/cheese/ bug/393617]https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/ source/cheese/ bug/393617[/url] [url=https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/ source/libv4l/ bug/549750]https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/ source/libv4l/ bug/549750[/url]

Googling for "uvcvideo CNF7129 error" gives me quite a few results. Perhaps there's something in there that I missed.
tracyanne

Apr 01, 2010
10:30 PM EDT
Sander, I've been trying to get a DEBUG=4 up to the pastebin site, but the damn thing is so big I haven't managed to do so.
Sander_Marechal

Apr 02, 2010
5:00 AM EDT
Well, you have a webserver. Just upload it there and link to it from here.

Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]

Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!