One Hundred Papercuts

Laptop Webcam Light Stays On

Bug #392317 reported by Shayne
10
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
One Hundred Papercuts
New
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Webcam light stays on, webcam is always active. The camera works perfectly in Skype and Cheese. This leaves the user with the feeling that there might be a security issue and it is very wasteful from a power perspective.

Hardware details:
Acer Aspire 5100
Acer OrbiCam - Manufacturer Bison

Acer Extensa 5420
Acer Crystal Eye Webcam - Manufacturer Suyin Optronics CORP

PowerTop reports that USB2.0 Camera is active 100% of the time and USB autosuspend should be enabled. PowerTop is unable to enable USB autosuspend, so this issue is not resolved.

Seems to be a common problem http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1139613 with no resolution. This does seem to be a common problem with many Linux distributions, not just Ubuntu.

See original description
Shayne (shayne-mocoda)
description: updated
Revision history for this message
Shayne (shayne-mocoda) wrote :

This has been marked as duplicate of - webcam still powered on after closing cheese https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/363583 - which I believe is incorrect, as in the description of that bug, the webcam light is OFF until you run Cheese, you can also have the light go OFF by restarting the computer.

In this case the webcam is always ON and cannot be turned off.

Revision history for this message
Vish (vish) wrote :

Thank you for bringing this bug to our attention. Unfortunately a paper cut should be a small usability issue that affects many people and is quick and easy to fix. I'm afraid this bug can't be addressed as part of this project.

This is a hardware specific issue, not a papercut.

A paper cut is a minor usability annoyance that an average user would encounter on his/her first day of using a new installation of Ubuntu 9.10.

For further info about papercuts criteria , pls read > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut

Since you feel it is a separate bug, Kindly file a different bug report got this issue.

Revision history for this message
linuxbastard (linuxbastard) wrote :

Hi,

I have the same issue but on a different webcam. I'm using the Bisoncam NB Pro (Device ID 0402:5602 ALi Corp. Video Camera Controller).

I'm also using Lucid Lynx Release (2.6.32-20-generic).

The webcam light is on when I log on and it stays on no matter what I do. I have joined a bug report for my webcam because the driver doesn't seem to work (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/350382) but this seems to be a whole new symptom and maybe related to this one. I have checked the other bug report, but in their case the webcam light is off UNTIL they open an application that uses it and then it stays on, while the issue here is the webcam light is on from the time I log on to ubuntu until I shut down.

I would love to just unload the driver, just to see if the webcam light would turn off but am not familiar with what driver to unload. Any help in the front would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

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