Issue Installing on Surface Book "FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/dev/v4l/by-path'"

[nriaziat]

I am getting this string of errors when attempting to install howdy on Ubuntu 16.04

Starting IR camera check...

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/preinst", line 54, in <module>
    devices = os.listdir("/dev/v4l/by-path")
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/dev/v4l/by-path'
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/howdy_2.5.0_all.deb (--unpack):
 subprocess new pre-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/howdy_2.5.0_all.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

[boltgolt]

Looks like you don't have any v4l2 devices, could you check if you have any video devices active by running ls /dev/video*? Cloud you also check that v4l2 is installed (dpkg -l v4l-utils)?

[nriaziat]

thanks for the comment! running the ls command said that there was no directory, and v4l2 is not installed as well. For reference, I am running on a Surface Book with custom kernel.

[boltgolt]

So in short, video4linux is the default camera driver on basically all linux distributions. I've never seen it missing on a system before. Could your custom kernel have been compiled without video support?

[nriaziat]

Had to check the kernel, but the JakeDay Surface kernel seems not to have camera support at this time. That must be the problem.

[boltgolt]

You could try installing v4l-utils but that probably wouldn't fix anything. I don't think i can do much here, it's an kernel issue.