Question #142433 “How to install.tar files?” : Questions : file-roller package : Ubuntu

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Eliah Kagan (degeneracypressure) said on 2011-01-22:

#1

If there is documentation on the website where you downloaded the .rar file, or inside the .rar file alongside the .tar files contained within it, then you should use that.

You can extract a tar file by right-clicking on it in Nautilus (the file manager) and clicking Extract... or Extract Here. Alternatively, you can extract it in the Terminal with the tar command, like "tar xf <filename>" where <filename> is the name of the .tar file (including the .tar extension). The file may contain help, telling you how to install its contents. Its contents may be source code for you to compile, or binaries for you to install, but either way there should be instructions.

If there are no instructions and the driver is publicly available to download, then please provide the URL. So long as I don't have to sign an NDA or anything nasty like that, I'll then go ahead and download the driver and examine it.

If there are no instructions and the driver is not publicly available, then let me know, and I'll ask you for a whole bunch of additional information to help you figure out how to install it.

If you don't know which .tar file to use, and they are named names that contains i386 and amd64 (or i386 and EM64T, or i386 and x86_64), then you can open a Terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and run the command "uname -m" (without the quotes). If the output is i386, use the .tar file with that in its name. If the output is x86_64, use the one with amd64, EM64T, or x86_64 in its name. If the .tar files are not named like that, then please provide the exact names of the .tar files.

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Titan (firuzvanquisher) said on 2011-01-22:

#2

THE USER GUIDE IS IN CHINEIES
Theweb link is 'http://www.zebronics.info/downloads/Webcam/Bluemoon_and_sphere/Linux/'

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Eliah Kagan (degeneracypressure) said on 2011-01-22:

#3

You have posted a comment, rather than reopening this question by indicating that you need further assistance. Do you still need help? If so, did you try all the things I suggested in my previous post?

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Titan (firuzvanquisher) said on 2011-01-22:

#4

when i run the command "uname-m" the output is i686 . I don't know what to do now.

the URL from where i downloaded the driver is http://www.zebronics.info/downloads/Webcam/Bluemoon_and_sphere/Linux/

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mycae (mycae) said on 2011-01-22:

#5

I am unable to extract the contents of that archive -- it appears corrupt.

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Eliah Kagan (degeneracypressure) said on 2011-01-23:

#6

@Titan: If the output of "uname -m" is i686, and there are only two .tar files inside the .rar file, and one of the .tar files says "i386" or "i686", and the other says "amd64" or "EM64T" or "x86_64", then the .tar file that says "i386" or "i686" is the one for your computer. Otherwise, **please provide the exact names of the .tar files.**

@Titan: If that doesn't solve your problem, please post again.

@mycae: What archive are you unable to extract? Are you unable to extract the .rar archive (which clearly Titan has been able to extract)? Or are you unable to extract the .tar archives contained within it?

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Titan (firuzvanquisher) said on 2011-01-23:

#7

The name of .tar file is " uvcvideo.tar ".
I have extracted it but don't know how to configure it onto the machine so that the web-cam works properly.

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Eliah Kagan (degeneracypressure) said on 2011-01-23:

#8

This answer is based, in part, on a Google Translator translation of the PDF manual from Chinese to English.

I have downloaded and extracted the .rar file. As you had said, it contains two .tar files. One of them is called "uvcvideo.tar". The other one is called "uvcvideo开发包.tar".

I don't know Chinese, but Google Translator says that "开发包" means "Development Kit", so the "uvcvideo.tar" file (without the Chinese characters in the name) is most likely the one you want to use.

Extracting that file creates a folder called uvcvideo_cur. Open up a Terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type "cd " (without the quotes, but with the space at the end). Then drag the uvcvideo_cur folder from Nautilus (the file manager) into the Terminal window. That pastes its absolute path into the Terminal window. Then press enter to execute this command.

Now run these commands (by typing or pasting them in, then pressing enter), but stop if any commands appear to fail (for example, if they print out error messages). One or more of the commands that start with "sudo" may ask for your password, in which case you should type it in and press enter. As you are typing your password in the Terminal, you will not see any placeholder characters (like *)--that's OK. I recommend you paste these commands, but if you choose to type them, please take note that "uname -r" is enclosed in backticks (the key you press with shift to produce ~ on a US/English keyboard), not single-quotes.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`
make
sudo make install
modprobe v4l1-compat
modprobe v4l2-common
modprobe videodev
modprobe uvcvideo

If any of those steps appears to fail, please post again, pasting all the text from the Terminal (*all* of it, starting with the "cd " command at the beginning). If all the steps succeeded then, at this point, the webcam's drivers should be installed and running.

The driver distribution comes with a utility called LUVCview, which you can use to test your webcam. According to the documentation, this utility supports displaying the output of your webcam at two resolutions: 640x480, and 320x240. To test your webcam, displaying its output at 640x480, run the command:

./luvcview -d /dev/video0 -f yuv -s 640x480

To test it at 320x240, run the command:

./luvcview -d /dev/video0 -f yuv -s 320x240

If neither of those works, then your webcam driver installation probably didn't work. In that case, please feel free to post again for more assistance (and please paste *all* the text from the Terminal, when you do).