webcam + external camera failure, cannot access /dev/video*: No such file or directory

Question

I hope someone out there can help me!

I'm working on a Toshiba SATELLITE-L50-A-1DN, and I am having problems connecting a camera to the USB ports, as well as the integrated webcam not being recognised.

I am using Ubuntu 16.04 with kernel 4.13.0-45-generic

After plugging in an external webcam, lsusb does not change, indicating no device has been recognised.

ls -ltrh /dev/video* returns the error: ls: cannot access '/dev/video*': No such file or directory

I have tried installing uvcvideo, but the most up to date version is already installed. Related to this, I cannot access the Video4Linux module required to use one of the two cameras I am trying to use.

I am aware of the same question being posted here: cannot access /dev/video*: No such file or directory but I can't seem to make that solution work for me.

Answer 1

In dev is there root direct:

my@my-u18gv:~$ cd /dev/video0

If the bellow msg come:

No such file or directory

Then there may be two cases if i found and try to fix:

* 1.) The ubuntu machine or linux machine. *

There may be various scenario or dependencies which may be causing this but this what i check on both condition. The the packages and retart the system

sudo apt-get update

To check the webcamp you can use cheese or any other it depends on you:

sudo apt-get install cheese
cheese

* 2.) Ubuntu in Virtual Machine running on windows. * I'm using ubuntu 18.04, virtual machine 5.2.14 on windows 10 64bit.

Steps:

• Open the VM Virtual Box and select the snapshot you are using.
• Select the Settings
• Select the USB menu at the left
• Enable the usb controller and select the USB 2.0 (EHCI) cintroller
• Click from USB Device_filter there is a usb cable icon with '+' sign at the right side.
• Select your device from the list. In my list it was realtek semiconductor corp.

Here you may face one issue: while selecting and USB 2.0 and when you start then if you get below error.

failed to install extension pack VERR_SYMBOL_NOT_FOUND ..

Then you need to install VM VirtualBox Extension Pack.

Note: take care that the version of the VM virtualbox and extension package should be same or it might give you error.

Steps: For installing VM VirtualBox Extension Pack link:https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Download_Old_Builds_5_2 For every version you will find the extension package you need in above link.

• Open the VM Virtual Box and click on File --> Preferences --> Extensions
• Click on Plus icon and Add the extension which you downloaded.

Answer 2

Execute the command:

enter image description here

system error:

[ERROR] [1575905480.653251919]: Unable to identify '/dev/video0': 2, No such file or directory enter image description here

Answers:

First of all, try your own laptop camera good or bad (do a QQ search, etc...); no problem found

Then review the virtual machine settings. The blue circle has not been opened before and the virtual machine must be turned off for it to be marked;

enter image description here

Reboot, the camera device can now be found in the virtual machine and check "Connect (disconnect from host)".

enter image description here

Re-run the command, the camera can open correctly

enter image description here

I hope it works