Re: Kernel module inactive by default?
On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 06:23:38PM +0200, Hans-J. Ullrich wrote:
> I discovered a strange behaviour since some time. Maybe someone can explain
> it:
>
> I am running an Acer Crystal Eye Cam ( 5986:0102
> Acer Crystal Eye webcam), and the cam is running fine (driver is uvcvideo).
> Lucview is working, and kopete shows video, when I am in the settings menu.
>
> But I am wondering, why the driver is always incative (green led is off), when
> I am not running any application, which it is directly accessing (like xawtv,
> kopete or whatever)?
>
> Whenever I am starting one of these applications, the green led is on, I get a
> picture/video, but when I leave it, the green led gets off. This means for me:
> The driver is now inactive! In the past, I could never see this behaviour, the
> green led was always on.
>
> Might this be the reason, why camorama, kdetv or other video-applications
> cannot access to /dev/videoX ?
>
> The access rights are of course set correctly, running as root gets no success
> either.
>
> So, is this normal? If yes, why? If not, how can I fix it?
>
> This is the output of lsmod:
>
> v4l1_compat 12932 2 uvcvideo,videodev
> v4l2_compat_ioctl32 9296 1 videodev
>
> Thank you for any information.
It is normal for a webcam to have a light that indicates when it is
transfering video data. That way you can easily tell when the camera
is recording and when it is off. Helps make sure you don't have spyware
recording you without your knowledge I suppose.
If no application is reading data from the camera, then there is no
reason for the camera to send any so it has no reason to be on, so the
camera can be off and the light would then be off too.
--
Len Sorensen
Reply to: