webcam

July 14th, 2012 - 10:36 pm ET by Chris | Report spam
I'm having a problem getting my webcam to come on when in a video chat.
It will come on when I bring up Skype, it will come up when I run Cheese
but other than that nothing. Xcam reports "Failed to start
camera:Invalid argument. Any assistance would be appreciated.

Chris

Chris
KeyID 0xE372A7DA98E6705C
31.11°N 97.89°W (Elev. 1092 ft)


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#1 Robert Riches
July 14th, 2012 - 11:20 pm ET | Report spam
On 2012-07-15, Chris wrote:
I'm having a problem getting my webcam to come on when in a video chat.
It will come on when I bring up Skype, it will come up when I run Cheese
but other than that nothing. Xcam reports "Failed to start
camera:Invalid argument. Any assistance would be appreciated.

Chris



One possibility might be a permissions problem:

Is the user account in question a member of the video group?
Has that account logged out and back in since being put in the
video group?

What are the owner, group, and permission on /dev/video*?

What are the group memberships of the user account in question?

Robert Riches

(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)
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#2 Chris
July 15th, 2012 - 12:03 am ET | Report spam
On 07/14/2012 10:20 PM, Robert Riches wrote:
On 2012-07-15, Chris wrote:
I'm having a problem getting my webcam to come on when in a video chat.
It will come on when I bring up Skype, it will come up when I run Cheese
but other than that nothing. Xcam reports "Failed to start
camera:Invalid argument. Any assistance would be appreciated.

Chris



One possibility might be a permissions problem:

Is the user account in question a member of the video group?
Has that account logged out and back in since being put in the
video group?

What are the owner, group, and permission on /dev/video*?

What are the group memberships of the user account in question?



I honestly must admit I've forgotten how to check that or to check which
groups the user 'chris' has. Would you please refresh my memory.


Chris
KeyID 0xE372A7DA98E6705C
31.11°N 97.89°W (Elev. 1092 ft)


Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to
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#3 Aragorn
July 15th, 2012 - 02:47 am ET | Report spam
On Sunday 15 July 2012 06:03, Chris conveyed the following to
alt.os.linux.mandriva...

On 07/14/2012 10:20 PM, Robert Riches wrote:

On 2012-07-15, Chris wrote:

I'm having a problem getting my webcam to come on when in a video
chat. It will come on when I bring up Skype, it will come up when I
run Cheese but other than that nothing. Xcam reports "Failed to
start camera:Invalid argument. Any assistance would be appreciated.



One possibility might be a permissions problem:

Is the user account in question a member of the video group?
Has that account logged out and back in since being put in the
video group?

What are the owner, group, and permission on /dev/video*?

What are the group memberships of the user account in question?



I honestly must admit I've forgotten how to check that or to check
which groups the user 'chris' has. Would you please refresh my memory.



man groups

The command...

groups chris

... should show all the groups chris is a member of.

As an alternative, you can also use...

id

... while logged in as yourself to list your groups, including your UID
and the GIDs for those groups. You can - if you have the permissions to
do so - also use this command on other user accounts.

man id

... will tell you more. ;-)

= Aragorn (registered GNU/Linux user #223157)
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#4 Chris
July 15th, 2012 - 09:04 am ET | Report spam
On 07/15/2012 01:47 AM, Aragorn wrote:
On Sunday 15 July 2012 06:03, Chris conveyed the following to
alt.os.linux.mandriva...

On 07/14/2012 10:20 PM, Robert Riches wrote:

On 2012-07-15, Chris wrote:

I'm having a problem getting my webcam to come on when in a video
chat. It will come on when I bring up Skype, it will come up when I
run Cheese but other than that nothing. Xcam reports "Failed to
start camera:Invalid argument. Any assistance would be appreciated.



One possibility might be a permissions problem:

Is the user account in question a member of the video group?
Has that account logged out and back in since being put in the
video group?

What are the owner, group, and permission on /dev/video*?

What are the group memberships of the user account in question?



I honestly must admit I've forgotten how to check that or to check
which groups the user 'chris' has. Would you please refresh my memory.



man groups

The command...

groups chris

... should show all the groups chris is a member of.

As an alternative, you can also use...

id

... while logged in as yourself to list your groups, including your UID
and the GIDs for those groups. You can - if you have the permissions to
do so - also use this command on other user accounts.

man id

... will tell you more. ;-)



Thanks, this is what I see:

[ ~]$ groups chris
chris : chris lp lpadmin
[ ~]$ id chris
uidP0(chris) gidP0(chris) groupsP0(chris),7(lp),107(lpadmin)

I have two group files in /etc, /etc/group and /etc/group- these contain:

video:x:82:

Looking at a really old book I have on Linux it says you can manually
add a user to a group. Can I just simply add user 'chris' to the group
video, log out and back in again or is it not as simple as that?


Chris
KeyID 0xE372A7DA98E6705C
31.11°N 97.89°W (Elev. 1092 ft)


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#5 Bit Twister
July 15th, 2012 - 10:22 am ET | Report spam
On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 08:04:27 -0500, Chris wrote:
I have two group files in /etc, /etc/group and /etc/group- these contain:

video:x:82:

Looking at a really old book I have on Linux it says you can manually
add a user to a group. Can I just simply add user 'chris' to the group
video, log out and back in again or is it not as simple as that?



Yes.
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