detail that should have been with the attachment: I have same issue with Ubuntu 11.10 on a Lenovo laptop with built-in camera; same Gtk warning message as indicated by the OP, but NO GUI or splash screen visible as cheese is started, so no way to access any 'check config' commands.
If I turn on the 'video call' option in Skype, camera works fine; but it is usually off as link BW is 'not good enough'; only apps running when cheese app is tried are F'Fox, T'bird, & the terminal console. Running with the --gst-debug=5 log option as suggested by hychen above generates a *** 400 *** Mbyte file; after the start-up period, cheese is taking over 80% of the CPU (Celeron 2.2GHz), log file size seems static; 'nothing magic' happens. There must be a lot of duplicate info/messages in the log as it has compressed down to less than 1MByte..(attached) I see a forum post here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2068818 where the OP (squakie in the forum) states his issue (with 12.04) was solved on upgrade to 12.10. Is it possible to get a backport / work-around for earlier versions ? (limited capabilities of my platform preclude moving to 3-D desktops). Bugzilla etc in other environments I have worked with give links to the changeset that fixed whatever issue was reported originally.. FTR, other info from my system: dmesg |grep 'video' [ 0.206120] pci 0000:00:02.0: Boot video device [ 12.862718] Linux video capture interface: v2.00 [ 12.895972] uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device Lenovo EasyCamera (090c:3371) [ 13.005371] usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo [ 7166.558394] PM: resume of drv:uvcvideo dev:2-3:1.0 complete after 673.003 msecs [ 7166.558400] PM: resume of drv:uvcvideo dev:2-3:1.1 complete after 672.982 msecs ~$ lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 090c:3371 Feiya Technology Corp. ~$ lsmod |grep 'video' uvcvideo 67271 0 videodev 85626 1 uvcvideo video 19069 1 i915 ~$ lsmod |grep 'i915' i915 513895 3 drm_kms_helper 32889 1 i915 drm 192194 4 i915,drm_kms_helper i2c_algo_bit 13199 1 i915 video 19069 1 i915 ~$ ls -alrt /dev/video* crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 0 2013-02-16 08:51 /dev/video0 ~$ uname -a Linux a_user 3.0.0-29-generic #46-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 4 12:17:31 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/930671 Title: video blank and menus greyed out in cheese To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cheese/+bug/930671/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs