I assumed the drivers are not loaded because I couldn’t find the config file in Step 4… and when I use VLC, OBS studio, or Qt V4l2 test utility… I don’t see a video source like I do for things like webcams etc…
using this seems to give me the same output as my step 1… is there something I should be looking for?
Interesting using the -nnk I the only extra info I got were the values in the square brackets… nothing for Kernel Driver in use or Kernel modules… can I take that to mean the driver is not loaded?
Unless you did some other processing (e.g. grep) to trim down the list, that’s rather strange, as it would suggest that there are actually no drivers in the kernel. This is unexpected behavior. I assume modinfo zr36067 produces some output? If so, try sudo modprobe zr36067 and try lspci -nnk again. If it still is an issue look for errors in your logs (journalctl).
modprobe: FATAL: Module zr36067 not found in directory /lib/modules/5.8.0-41-generic
Couple things in red:
__common_interrupt: 1.55 No irq handler for vector
many lines of:
ACPI Error: AE_NOT_FOUND, While resolving a named reference package element - LNKC (20200528/dspkginit-4>
Some other lines that look like they are about network connections but I’m not 100% sure… not sure what to look for and it’s too long to take a screen shot
Seemingly inexplicably, it has been dropped. In Bionic, it exists. In Focal and beyond, it does not. This is consistent with Debian, too. I looked through the changelogs and the drop is not documented.
…that is, until I looked through the not-so-easy-to-parse upstream changelogs and found this that saw the light of day with kernel version 5.2:
The zoran driver has been marked deprecated for a year now
without any interest to update this driver to the vb2 framework.
Time to remove it altogether.
If I read between the lines, it seems like some work is being done to get it fixed up, but it’s not done yet based on the TODO I found:
TODO
- fix the v4l compliance "TRY_FMT cannot handle an invalid pixelformat"
- Filter JPEG data to made output work
Long story short, newer versions of *buntu are going to be problematic in this regard. You should use Bionic (18.04).
Given that it should Just Work™. You can read about modprobe to set parameters if need be.
Thanks you so much for your help. I have a dumb question.
If it was removed then to get it working in 20.10 is it just a matter of installing the drivers or might there be compatability issues and that is why it’s better to go back to 18.04.
Looking at lubuntu.me threre is this 18.04.5 Bionic Beaver LTS (LXDE)… is this what I should use? I guess I should just install that to a separate partition and see if it works easily or has surprises. sadly my fall back plan is to resurect some old hardware to install WindowME (scary).
I am no kernel developer but this “vb2 framework” suggests to me that some fundamental architecture changed and the driver needed to change with it. That said, I don’t think (but don’t know) that the old driver on a new kernel would work. An old kernel would work, but that presents a whole different set of issues.
In the end, 18.04 would be the better solution, as you found.
As an alternate fall back, you may be able to use Windows in a virtual machine with PCI passthrough to access the device.
However, before I go that route, you might want to actually get in touch with the developers and ask for advice. You’ll notice they do have a mailing list.
Thanks so much for you help. Learning linux ad hoc has been hard and I am so grateful you were willing to give me so much effort.
Took a while… had prolems with my SSD and then it died… but got 18.04 installed… but still not working. Is the kernel still too new? Do I need to go further back? Where do I get older versions and how old do I need to go? What version was it depricated?
a realated question. When I boot up the live CD will it load drivers at that point? wondering if I can check to see if the kernel is compatible at that point or do I need to do the full install first.
When you boot, open a terminal and run uname -r just as you did before. As long as you don’t let it update (remember you can always just turn off/unplug networking), you should be on 4 not 5.
sorry for the back and forth I should have been more specific… will liveUSB load the PCI device drivers and I can do a lspci -nnk to see if there are drivers loaded or do I need to do an install.