Please upstream modules into mainline kernel

[bk2204]

I recently discovered that my ThinkPad X1 Carbon needs an out-of-tree driver (this one) for my camera. That seems atypical for Intel hardware, which is typically well supported upstream.

I've tried with both Debian sid's 5.18.0-2-amd64 and Ubuntu jammy's 5.15, but the driver is included in neither distro, probably because it isn't upstream. Since this hardware is considered important for most people who use an Alder Lake laptop, could you consider upstreaming this driver (and any dependent pieces) into the mainline kernel relatively soon, even if only in the staging area?

I did try to build this myself with DKMS, but due to #13 (both the missing header and then the modpost error), it's not possible to do so, so there is presently no way to make this hardware work on Debian.

[dennis-pries]

Fedora (and I think a lot of other distos) also will not include them, if not upstreamed.

Please do it.

[wbolster]

the new Dell XPS 13 Plus (9320) also requires this driver for the webcam, but building it fails on linux kernel 5.18.7 (arch linux) due to the issues in #13 (missing headers, and unresolved symbols after manually copying headers)

[naps62]

I also have a Dell XPS 13 plus, and just stumbled upon this issue. Also failed to build.
I'm not very profficient in kernel module compilation. Is there a way to get this working at the moment? I'm using Manjaro

[K-MeLeOn]

Dell XPS 13 Plus too, building error on modpost with message 'undefined!' on ov02c10.ko and ov01a10.ko

[paulmenzel]

I notified the Linux upstream folks about the issue. The current recommendation is to not buy such devices. From Greg KH:

On Thu, Aug 11, 2022 at 04:54:53PM +0300, Laurent Pinchart wrote:

For the time being, I agree with your recommendation to not buy these
devices if you care about camera support.

I second this, don't buy these devices if the vendor is not willing to
get their drivers upstreamed properly.

It also sounds like, that it won’t be easily be solved.

Those of you who can, I can only suggest to return the device to not further support vendors screwing up Linux support in this case, and save time fiddling with Linux driver issues.

No idea, who dropped the ball here, but the ChromiumOS/ChromeOS and Ubuntu/Canonical/Dell/Lenovo should have started the discussion with the upstream folks much earlier. It’s a very sad situation for the GNU/Linux ecosystem.

[kbingham]

We can certainly help over at https://libcamera.org if anyone from Intel wants to contact us.

[pinchartl]

@paulmenzel I share your disappointment, but I'd like to focus on how we could improve the situation instead of generating bad PR, as I'm sure the latter doesn't need my help :-)

I won't comment on what happened at Google, Canonical, Dell or Lenovo, as only them have a full picture. All I can say is that it's fairly common for discussions to start in private to decide how to support new product, especially before they are released. I have no reason to believe those discussions didn't start, but they obviously didn't bear fruits so far. The problem isn't easy to solve, and I do understand how development teams can be pressured with product deadlines. Still, this may explain the situation, but not excuse it.

Another point I'd like to make is that we have received technical support from multiple Intel developers when developing IPU3 support in libcamera. There are people with goodwill in their teams, I don't think it would be fair blaming all the developers for the lack of a high-level upstreaming strategy.

We won't be able to fix the mistakes that were made without a clear commitment from Intel, they need to engage directly with the Linux kernel and libcamera upstream developers. Given the amount of work that lies ahead, this has to happen now. My door is fully open.

[Thesola10]

hey, in the mean time I managed to create a patch for pure DKMS building in my AUR package intel-ipu6-dkms-git

[Vascro]

Doesn't appear there are any new updates regarding this ipu6 mipi camera issue. I just got my new XPS 9320 in the mail and noticed this issue immediately. Hopefully Intel fixes this ASAP.

[paulmenzel]

I can only recommend to return the system to not support such products. Otherwise vendors won’t change as long as they can sell such devices.

Additionally, Jonathan Corbet summarized the topic in the LWN article The growing image-processor unpleasantness.

[naps62]

I'm also stuck with a Dell XPS 13 with this issue. don't have a chance to return it unfortunately, although I do agree returning sends the more forceful message to vendors.

FYI @Thesola10 I tried your kernel module (although I'm not 100% sure what it would achieve) on my Manjaro installation. The boot hanged for a few minutes but ended up booting in the end. Stilll no working though, so I removed it again to fix the boot process

[Thesola10]

The lengthened boot process is due to including the intel_vsc drivers into the initramfs. Those can be excluded and they'll load after boot. Otherwise the driver works with icamerasrc on GStreamer so you can try installing that as well

[cjechlitschek]

This might be already known, but I still want to mention it. Canonical provides prebuilt packages for some Dell systems that enable the camera: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Dell

[netllama]

@cjechlitschek those packages are completely useless if someone isn't running a Debian based distro. Also, see the previous comments which explain why those packages are flawed.

[corebots]

I also miss the webcam under Fedora, pleas fix who can!