Dell Latitude E5470 running Qubes 4.0.3 - no web cam...

[Andrew Sullivan]

As per the Subject, I have installed 4.0.3 on my Latitude E5470.  Everything seems to work, except the webcam.  If I fire up Cheese, it just says "No device found". The camera works fine in Windows 10 and Linux Mint.  Running lsusb in a Dom0 terminal shows the following entry:

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 1bcf:28b8 Sunplus Innovation Technology Inc.

So Qubes can sort of see it.  What am I missing?

Thanks

[Hauke Johannknecht]

On Tue, Jun 09, 2020 at 05:07:41AM -0700, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> Mint. Running lsusb in a Dom0 terminal shows the following entry:
> Bus 001 Device 002: ID 1bcf:28b8 Sunplus Innovation Technology Inc.
> So Qubes can sort of see it. What am I missing?

if lsusb in dom0 shows anything, it means you are missing sys-usb.

(or you have a detailed multi-usb-controller setup, but then you
probably wouldnt be asking this)

[haaber]

You use sys-usb (->make sure it is started, otherwise you don not see
usb devices). Since you see your cam, I presume that is OK.
Then you only need to attach the webcam to your cheese-running VM !! Use
the widget on right top corner of your screen for that.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Well, you were both correct, I am missing sys-usb.  I also now know one way to break a Qubes installation!  In the absence of this being installed at the start, I attempted to do it manually, as per the Documentation.  The qube got created OK, but when I went to open it the whole system froze...  I did a "hard" powerdown and tried to restart; wasn't asked for a passphrase to decrypt the system and eventually I got a lot of incomprehensible (to me) messages.  Time for a re-install (not a big deal, I'm still learning Qubes rather than using it for real).  I then noticed that the option to create sys-usb was greyed out, because I was installing to a USB flash drive (and have a wireless USB mouse) so that's one mystery solved.  All more-or-less working again, and I have a "proper" SSD on order.

Thanks again for your help.

Andrew

[Rafael Reis]

I’ve also started with no sys-usb and a flash drive. Then imaged the usb drive to the internal ssd, and installed sys-usb afterwards. Everything went smoothly.
You indeed cannot have sys-usb if you are booting from the usb stick.

Never tried the webcam to be honest. I find it counterintuitive to use a facecam on a privacy and security oriented os. I’d tape the thing shut. But you should probably try kernel-latest . It is stable on my 5470 and fixed the sd card reader for me, which back then when I first installed was not working.

[Andrew Sullivan]

Hi Rafael

I have an M.2 SSD for the WWAN slot on my laptop on order, so the problem will be sorted soon.  If indeed it is a problem - you make a valid point about using a webcam on a security-focused system.  If I really have to (rarely) I could always revert to Windows or Mint.