Webcam not working in Ubuntu 17.10 on a Macbook air 7.1

[luciomarinelli]

I decided to replace MacOs with a real OS on my wife's Macbook air, so I followed Ubuntu tutorial and successfully installed Ubuntu 17.10 on her Macbook air 7.1 (dual boot so far). Everything seems to work out of the box apart from the webcam. I reached patjak github page and followed instructions to install the facetimehd driver, however it still does not work. Apparently the /dev/video ore /dev/video0 was not created. I also tried to blacklist modprobe bdc_pci and rebooted but still cheese or mplayer tv:// do not work.

Here is the dmesg output after freshly loading the facetimehd module after a reboot:

[ 239.595147] show_signal_msg: 12 callbacks suppressed [ 239.595152] nautilus[1378]: segfault at fffffffffffffe80 ip 00007f77b7c60367 sp 00007ffe67f45198 error 5 in libgtk-3.so.0.2200.24[7f77b7982000+6fc000] [ 940.649699] media: Linux media interface: v0.10 [ 940.656803] Linux video capture interface: v2.00 [ 940.665093] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: Found FaceTime HD camera with device id: 1570 [ 940.665301] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: Setting 64bit DMA mask [ 940.671032] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: S2 PCIe link init succeeded [ 940.671064] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: Refclk: 25MHz (0xa) [ 940.681011] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: PLL reset finished [ 940.681012] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: Waiting for S2 PLL to lock at 450 MHz [ 940.681024] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: S2 PLL is locked after 10 us [ 940.690979] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: S2 PLL is in bypass mode [ 940.710897] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: DDR40 PHY PLL locked on safe settings [ 940.710911] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: STRAP valid [ 940.710912] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: Configuring DDR PLLs for 450 MHz [ 940.710918] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: DDR40 PLL is locked after 0 us [ 940.710927] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: First DDR40 VDL calibration completed after 2 us [ 940.710938] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: Second DDR40 VDL calibration completed after 2 us [ 940.710938] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: Using step size 151 [ 940.710943] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: VDL set to: coarse=0x10008, fine=0x1011b [ 940.710947] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: Virtual VTT enabled [ 940.731358] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: S2 DRAM memory address: 0x22159559 [ 940.731387] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: Rewrite DDR mode registers succeeded [ 940.731598] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: Full memory verification succeeded! (0) [ 941.199765] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: Loaded firmware, size: 1392kb [ 941.358488] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: ISP woke up after 0ms [ 941.358494] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: Number of IPC channels: 7, queue size: 44865 [ 941.358497] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: Firmware requested heap size: 3072kb [ 941.368447] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: ISP second int after 0ms [ 941.368449] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: Channel description table at 00800000 [ 941.378563] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: magic value: 00000000 after 0 ms [ 941.378565] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: Enabling interrupts [ 941.378768] FWMSG: [ 941.378789] FWMSG: - APOLLO-ISP-APPLE ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 941.378798] FWMSG: [ 941.378810] FWMSG: Restart count : 0 [ 941.378830] FWMSG: Platform : mode = TARGET, ID = 0x00000000, HW = 00020018.00000000 [ 941.378951] FWMSG: System Clock : 200000000 Hz [ 941.378964] FWMSG: Processor mode : SUPERVISOR [ 941.378978] FWMSG: Cache architecture type : SEPARATE [ 941.378991] FWMSG: Cache type : WRITEBACK [ 941.379004] FWMSG: Data Cache Line : 32 [0x20] [ 941.379017] FWMSG: Boot arguments entries : 2 [ 941.379030] FWMSG: 0000: 0x00000000 0x00000000 [ 941.379047] FWMSG: Physical memory base : 0x00000000 [TLB base 0x00160000] [ 941.379061] FWMSG: Main memory : base : 0x00000000 [ 941.379192] FWMSG: size : 8388608 [0x00800000] [8.0 MB] [ 941.379209] FWMSG: Extra heap : base : 0x2080b000 [phy = 0x0080b000] [ 941.379226] FWMSG: size : 3145728 [0x00300000] [3.0 MB] [ 941.379242] FWMSG: Shared window : base : 0x00800000 [static wiring] [ 941.379259] FWMSG: size : 125829120 [0x07800000] [120.0 MB] [ 941.379273] FWMSG: Shared memory : base : 0x00800000 [ 941.379416] FWMSG: size : 260046848 [0x0f800000] [248.0 MB] [ 941.379435] FWMSG: TEXT : 1421992 [0x15b2a8] - text 667256, cstring 38749, const 715528 [ 941.379455] FWMSG: DATA : 8076 [0x1f8c] - data 0, bss 460, common 1452, noinit 6144 [ 941.379516] FWMSG: Heap free space : 10002626 [0x0098a0c2] [ 941.379531] FWMSG: Heap allocated space : 94656 [0x000171c0] [ 941.379548] FWMSG: Disclaimer : Copyright (c) APPLE Inc. All Rights Reserved. [ 941.379580] FWMSG: Application : adc [release] [ 941.379594] FWMSG: Linked on : Jul 25 2015 - 08:48:55 [ 941.379607] FWMSG: Release : S2ISP-01.43.00 [ 941.379642] FWMSG: H4ISPAPPLE : 11536 [ 941.379654] FWMSG: H4ISPCD : 4081 [ 941.379665] FWMSG: ffw : 4143 [ 941.379734] FWMSG: Tool-chain : iPhone OS - 7.0.3 [clang/clang++] [ 941.379744] FWMSG: [ 941.379764] FWMSG: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ 941.379773] FWMSG: [ 941.453108] FWMSG: [ISP] CMD = 0x0004 [CISP_CMD_PRINT_ENABLE] [ 941.453273] FWMSG: [ISP] CMD = 0x0003 [CISP_CMD_CONFIG_GET] [ 941.453491] FWMSG: [ISP] CH = 0 CMD = 0x010d [CISP_CMD_CH_INFO_GET] [ 941.453734] facetimehd 0000:02:00.0: Direct firmware load for facetimehd/1871_01XX.dat failed with error -2

It would be great if also the webcam would work! Thank you

[trendsetter37]

Getting the same thing for Ubuntu 18.04 as well.

[heewa]

Same for me on Ubuntu 19.04, Macbook Air 2013. I don't mind doing some debug work, if anyone can guide me on where to look, including sources (though I'm not familiar with this stuff specifically).

[dgchrt]

Still not working on MacBook Air 7,1 running Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS.

[patjak]

There are no visible errors in the logs above. Are you getting the same dmesg output? Are you also missing the /dev/video0 device? What does "ls -la /dev/video*" show you?

[dgchrt]

Output from ls -la /dev/video*:

ls: cannot access '/dev/video*': No such file or directory

Output from dmesg contains no "facetimehd" entries.

Output from modprobe facetimehd:

modprobe: FATAL: Module facetimehd not found in directory /lib/modules/5.13.0-37-generic

Also:

$ ls -ld /lib/modules/5.13.0-37-generic/extra/facetimehd.ko 
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3729824 Mär 24 07:34 /lib/modules/5.13.0-37-generic/extra/facetimehd.ko
$ ls -ld /usr/lib/modules/5.13.0-37-generic/extra/facetimehd.ko 
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3729824 Mär 24 07:34 /usr/lib/modules/5.13.0-37-generic/extra/facetimehd.ko

[dgchrt]

In my case, I was missing depmod, but now I've found the correct docs for the driver, thanks.

[luciomarinelli]

Following my original issue, I just wanted to say that I succeeded in having the webcam working on the MacBook Air 7.1 running Ubuntu 18.04 and following the instructions provided in patjak/facetimehd. The only thing that is not working for me is the "auto-compile on kernal update" procedure, so I manually compile the package after every kernel update.

[dgchrt]

What must be done for this driver to get included in the regular distribution, e.g. in Ubuntu (even if it must go in the optional drivers pack)?