[xubuntu-users] USB camera being intercepted?

[Petter Adsen]

On Sat, 28 Nov 2015 23:00:35 +0000
Peter Flynn <peter at silmaril.ie> wrote:

> On 28/11/15 22:18, Peter Flynn wrote:
> [...]
> > And indeed spca was one of the names I saw in syslog. Now all I
> > need to do is root it out and destroy it, preferably
> > permanently :-)  
> 
> Hah. I installed cheese, which *does* used gspca, and I got a camera
> image. So success on the webcam score, although the response time is
> appalling, probably the age of the camera. But it'll do for the
> purpose I want it for.

Yay! :-D

> Thank you all very much for the help.
> 
> So if I wanted to download whatever is in its memory (old pix which I
> assume I have elsewhere :-) it looks like I need to find out how to
> disable gspca_main first. Lots of old web pages about how to do this,
> none of which work nowadays (like adding it
> to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist).

But that *does* work. Create a file in /etc/modprobe.d with a name like
'blacklist-spca.conf' (you need the .conf extension), with the full
name of the kernel module on a line by itself as the only contents.
Reboot, and it should no longer be loaded. Then run 'lsblk' to see if
it shows up as a block device you can mount.

You can also use 'rmmod' to remove the module from the running kernel
to avoid a reboot.

NOTE: It is entirely possible that this module is the only way for
Linux to communicate with the camera, so if you blacklist it you might
not be able to use it at all. If that is the case, just remove the file
you created above.

Petter

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