1

Plee

Hello folks! I've had my Latitude 7320 for a few years now and everything works out of the box with Ubuntu, except for the webcam. I've waited for years, and I'm now running 24.10 and still haven't been able to get this thing working. In this era it is very painful to have a webcam that does not work. There is at least one other person with my problem.

I've read a lot about this, and I believe that I have a MIPI ipu6 (tigerlake) architecture, which no longer uses USB so requires new packages. I see that there are many people out there running ubuntu with this type of webcam working, including official posts on the dell webpage.

Could someone please help a desperate soul here?

At the moment, I can't tell if there is a problem with loading the firmware, as it has an error message, but is followed by encouraging messages:

=> sudo dmesg | grep ipu
<snip>
[    2.857455] intel-ipu6 0000:00:05.0: Direct firmware load for intel/ipu6_fw.bin failed with error -2
[    2.864584] intel-ipu6 0000:00:05.0: FW version: 20230925
[    2.870327] intel-ipu6 0000:00:05.0: Found supported sensor OVTI8856:00
[    2.870334] intel-ipu6 0000:00:05.0: Connected 1 cameras

This may be due to the fact that the Oracular linux-firmware package installs a compressed version of this file at /lib/firmware/intel/ipu/ipu6se_fw.bin.zst. I did copy a version of ipu6_fw.bin to /lib/firmware/intel/ipu6se_fw.bin for good measure but continue to see the error.

What I've done

Diagnostics

The ipu6 video devices seem to show up

=> v4l2-ctl --list-devices
ipu6 (PCI:pci:pci0000:00):
    /dev/video1
    /dev/video2
    /dev/video3
    /dev/video4
    /dev/video5
    /dev/video6
    /dev/video7
    /dev/video8

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


Intel MIPI Camera (platform:v4l2loopback-000):
    /dev/video0

but the driver info does not show IPU6

=> v4l2-ctl --all
Driver Info:
    Driver name      : v4l2 loopback
    Card type        : Intel MIPI Camera
    Bus info         : platform:v4l2loopback-000
    Driver version   : 6.11.0
    Capabilities     : 0x85200001
        Video Capture
        Read/Write
        Streaming
        Extended Pix Format
        Device Capabilities
    Device Caps      : 0x05200001
        Video Capture
        Read/Write
        Streaming
        Extended Pix Format

The driver seems to be loaded

=> sudo lshw -C multimedia
  *-multimedia:0            
       description: Multimedia controller
       product: Intel Corporation
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 5
       bus info: pci@0000:00:05.0
       version: 01
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pciexpress msi pm bus_master cap_list
       configuration: driver=intel-ipu6 latency=0
       resources: iomemory:600-5ff irq:169 memory:6052000000-6052ffffff

as well as the v4l2-relay daemon service.

The PPA package installation

Using this page as a guide, I added the OEM Solutions Group PPA for Intel MIPI IPU6. Here is what is listed on that PPA:

enter image description here

These don't appear to be installable packages:

=> sudo apt update
<snip>
Hit:7 https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/oem-solutions-group/intel-ipu6/ubuntu oracular InRelease
All packages are up to date.    
=> sudo apt install ipu6-camera-bins
Error: Unable to locate package ipu6-camera-bins

but I can see the package details for each one of them. For example the gst-plugins-icamera package has this contents:

enter image description here

I can install the .deb packages listed each of them, with the exception of libipu6 which is a transitional package, so I don't believe it's a problem.

krumpelstiltskin
  • 2,636

2 Answers2

0

I solved the problem on my system (Dell Inc. Precision 5680) after quite some time for investigation. That's really not the quality I expect from Intel :/ Hope that my description helps other people out there :)

For me it worked to follow the official Ubuntu How To exactly with some additional steps here and there. This includes especially the "Troubleshooting" section, i.e.,

  • Remove the usage of ppa:oem-solutions-group/intel-ipu6

    $ sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:oem-solutions-group/intel-ipu6

  • Remove the usage of ppa:oem-solutions-group/intel-ipu7

    $ sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:oem-solutions-group/intel-ipu7

  • Remove all MIPI camera userspace components and OEM metapackages

    $ sudo apt autopurge oem-*-meta libia-* libgcss* libipu* libcamhal*

    $ sudo apt autopurge lib*ipu6*

    $ sudo apt autopurge lib*ipu7*

If you find any more ipu6 related packages, I would also remove them. The removal of the OEM repository seems also key to me (and it's not suggested for daily usage anyway). Instead, use the Dell repository for the IPU6 related packages (content of my /etc/apt/sources.list.d/oem-somerville-muk-meta.sources):

Types: deb                                                                      
URIs: http://dell.archive.canonical.com/
Suites: noble
Components: somerville somerville-muk

After restarting, I have then installed the packages according to my Ubuntu release (24.04) and my chipset:

$ sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends --yes \
linux-generic-hwe-24.04 \
linux-modules-ipu6-generic-hwe-24.04 \
linux-modules-usbio-generic-hwe-24.04

After another reboot, "Software & Updates" shows under "Additional Drivers" the entry "Using HAL library for MIPI camera..." which needs to be installed via "Apply changes". Another restart later,

$ sudo dmesg | grep ipu

showed an error for loading the correct firmware:

Direct firmware load for intel/ipu6ep_fw.bin failed with error -2

I have therefore then downloaded the firmware directly from the intel Git repo

cd /lib/firmware/intel/
sudo wget https://github.com/intel/ipu6-camera-bins/raw/refs/heads/main/lib/firmware/intel/ipu/ipu6ep_fw.bin
sudo chmod +x ipu6_fw.bin

After another reboot, the camera worked finally again, e.g., on https://mozilla.github.io/webrtc-landing/gum_test.html or started via command line:

sudo gst-launch-1.0 icamerasrc ! autovideosink
Markus Nentwig
  • 1
-1

Okay so the .dsc (from what I can find online) is literally just a text file, probably documentation for the .tar.gz. Now that tar is going to be needed to be extracted, and possibly have to figure out how to install what ever it brings. Ubuntu and .debs aren't like .exe on Windows and they won't tell apt to do anything with the other files in the same folder. Also if you don't append "./" in front of the package name when using apt, then it won't look for the .deb in the local folder and instead only search the repositories.

Did you follow the instructions on the Dell web page you linked at the end of the second paragraph? Those instructions are for 22.04 and also for a different laptop. Not saying it's impossible those could work, but if it's the exact same webcam maybe it could. Also don't know how specific those drivers are to the version of Ubuntu. It's possible you might have to use the Ubuntu Restore Image for your specific laptop if that doesn't work. I imagine if you use Dells restore image you can the update it to the newest version after. Just don't know if it'll delete the driver in the update. Hopefully not.

Also not sure what app you're testing the camera in but from what I read in 2 different links already (of the ones you shared) that the preview doesn't work well in Cheese but that you can get it working by opening Cheese using the command "sudo cheese -d "Intel MIPI Camera"" in a terminal. You can probably create a shortcut or a script that opens it using that command. Not sure why it's run as sudo though. I would test to see if it works without sudo.

4ngelDus7
  • 9