It toook me quite a while to figure this one out, so I post how I did it:
I tested this procedure on my server running the server 6.06 Ubuntu installation, integrated by the XUbuntu desktop...
The Hercules Classic Webcam is an el-chepo webcam incorporating 4LEDs for low lighting usage. "lsusb" sees the camera as "Omnivision Technologies, Inc". The drivers needed to make it work are the ov51x and ov519_decomp modules.
I assume in this description that your camera is seen on the USB bus, otherwise yo have to activate and make sure that USB works properly by activating the bus. You can find in this site enough descriptions on how to do that..
Once the cam is seen on the USB bus, the following procedure gives you a fuly functional cam on your Ubuntu 6.06 dapper machine:
1. Get the linux headers for your system, so that you can compile the drivers once you downloaded them. To do this, open a terminal window (Applications -> Terminal on XUbuntu) and type
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`
2. Get the modules for your webcam:
wget http://www.rastageeks.org/downloads/...g-0.5.4.tar.gz
Ensure the drivers landed into a directory you know
3. Move to the directory where your downloaded drivers are, and extract the source files from the tar files.
tar -xvf ov51x-jpeg-0.5.4.tar.gz
4. Change directory to where your sources are:
cd ov51x-jpeg-0.5.4
5. Compile and install the modules:
sudo make install
This will compile the drivers and install them into the subdirectory of /lib/modules/your-linux-version called extra
6. If all went well, we can install the modules by hand now:
sudo modprobe videodev
sudo modprobe i2c_core
sudo insmod /lib/modules/`uname -r`/extra/ov51x.ko
sudo insmod /lib/modules/`uname -r`/extra/ov519_decomp.ko
7. test your installation by using a camera viewing application, such as xawtv.
If all goes well, you will be able to see the output of your webcam in xawtv.
Now comes the tricky part: making such modules permanent, so that your machine recognizes the Hercules webcam both at bootup as well when you plug it in. The problem here with respect to other module installations is that for some obscure reason, the ov519_decomp module insists in loading the ov511 module when loading through modprobe, and ov511 knows nothing of some of the functions in ov519_decomp and therefore complains.
We will thus load ov51x normally through modprobe, but we will load ov519_decomp through insmod. Let us look at the steps to do this:
1. Make sure you load the vidoedev and i2c_core modules at bootup: to do this, in the terminal type:
sudo vi /etc/modules
We use here vi, but you can actually substitute vi with any other text editor of your preference (I know, I am old and I used vi for decades ;-P). At the end of the files, add the following two lines:
videodev
i2c_core
Now save the file and quit the editor. This will guarantee that from now on at bootup the videodev and the i2c_core modules are loaded.
2. Tell Ubuntu what to do whenever it notices the camera is plugged in:
sudo touch /etc/modprobe.d/ov51x
sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/ov51x
add to the file the following line:
install ov51x /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install ov51x; insmod /lib/modules/`uname -r`/extra/ov519_decomp.ko
This has to be ONLY on one line.
Save the file and quit the editor.
And voila, at next rebbot your Hercules Classic webcam is there, ready to use.... Have fun!
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