Linux loses the Philips webcam driver

Posted Aug 29, 2004 4:02 UTC (Sun) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

let's say you suddenly have many oopses on your system. Since you are a decent GNU fellow your system has no propriatary code it. So you start debugging the problem knowing that you have the full source.

Your neighbour, likes the OS you called GNU/Linux not because it is free software, bla, bla bla. He likes Linux cause it's cool. And he knows that he can contact you with any problem. He bought himself a nice Philips webcam in addition to his on-board nvidia display adapter. One of the things he likes to do is displaying the camera's output on the screen in real time. He needs compression for that.

One day his system starts panicing. He calls you. Once you notice that the is not a trivial problem you want to start debugging. So you first need to reproduce the problem in a system without the propriatary drivers (you use the free nv driver, and don't use the webcam). This time it worked. You found the problem.

However it seems that your patch wasn't tested well enough. Your friend suddenly starts getting system hangs. Some signs point to some problems from the direction of the X server. You're called for help once again.

You follow your standard procedure. But this time the problems disappear when the propriatary are removed. Your feeling is that this is an interaction of your fix from yesterday and one of the propriatary drivers. Initial tests point to the NVidia driver.

NVidia is said to have great linux support. And indeed, one day after you send them the bug report they respond. They have tracked it down to a small bug in their code. They were even kind enough to provide you with a test version of the fixed driver.

You install the new driver and it seems that all's well. But suddenly whenever your friend tries to watch the the cammera, his system hangs for a while. A drivers clash again? This time it is between two propriatary drivers. Who can fix the problem? Nobody has the full source: not NVidia and not Philips.

Now suppose that you're not just a helpful geek, but a sysadmin in a network that needs to solve problems fast?

Posted Aug 29, 2004 4:42 UTC (Sun) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

After reading a little more about this, it appears that the driver did
follow the model at one time. But the maintainer found it too difficult
to keep up with changes so he changed the driver so that it was partially
open as an insulation layer against core kernel changes. NVidia does this
too, but the open part of their driver isn't shipped as part of the kernel
proper. I don't see an inconsistancy here. I still wonder about the
"respecting the author's wishes" part.