[arch-general] Laptop's webcam gets blocked randomly

[Emil Velikov]

On Fri, 19 Mar 2021 at 15:33, riveravaldez via arch-general
<arch-general at lists.archlinux.org> wrote:
>
> On 3/8/21, Björn Seifert via arch-general
> <arch-general at lists.archlinux.org> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have the same laptop.
>
> Hi, Björn, could you confirm if you have installed the xf86-video-intel driver?
>
> Because I'm under the suspicion that maybe the issue comes from it.
> Being testing for a while without it installed and the problem seems
> to disappear.
>
I suspect that you might be conflating things.

The xf86-video-intel driver has nothing to do with the camera (v4l2)
or audio (alsa) subsystems. They are quite orthogonal.

Now, if the mentioned programs refuse to work - without any
v4l2/alsa/pcm warnings - then the issue might be xf86-video-intel
related.

For a dead trivial way to dismiss issues related to X (via
xf86-video-intel or otherwise) and Wayland compositors - switch to a
VT and run the following:
$ gst-launch-1.0 autovideosrc device=/dev/video0 ! autovideosink

This should work with nvidia, although I haven't tried. Note that you
might need to bump the number video0 to video1...

-Emil