IPU6 camera not accessible

English Hardware
1

Hello,

I use a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 2-in-1 with Intel Meteor Lake.

The Intel IPU6 driver and firmware installed. gstreamer, pipewire installed too.

The camera isn’t available in all applications (firefox, teams …). Sound works well.

There is an isys (input ipu6) driver/kernel modul installed, but no psys for output. But I’m not sure if the psys module should exists.

tested:

journalctl -k | grep intel-ipu

Aug 05 14:28:57 nnn kernel: intel-ipu6 0000:00:05.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
Aug 05 14:28:57 nnn kernel: intel-ipu6 0000:00:05.0: Found supported sensor OVTI08F4:00
Aug 05 14:28:57 nnn kernel: intel-ipu6 0000:00:05.0: Connected 1 cameras
Aug 05 14:28:57 nnn kernel: intel-ipu6 0000:00:05.0: Sending BOOT_LOAD to CSE
Aug 05 14:28:57 nnn kernel: intel-ipu6 0000:00:05.0: Sending AUTHENTICATE_RUN to CSE
Aug 05 14:28:57 nnn kernel: intel-ipu6 0000:00:05.0: CSE authenticate_run done
Aug 05 14:28:57 nnn kernel: intel-ipu6 0000:00:05.0: IPU6-v4[7d19] hardware version

inxi -Fxxrz

System:
  Kernel: 6.15.8-1-default arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 15.1.1
  Console: pty pts/0 wm: kwin_x11 DM: SDDM Distro: openSUSE Tumbleweed
    20250803
Machine:
  Type: Convertible System: LENOVO product: 21KECTO1WW v: ThinkPad X1 2-in-1
    Gen 9 serial: <filter> Chassis: type: 31 serial: <filter>
  Mobo: LENOVO model: 21KECTO1WW serial: <filter>
    part-nu: LENOVO_MT_21KE_BU_Think_FM_ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 Gen 9 UEFI: LENOVO
    v: N3YET77W (1.42 ) date: 04/16/2025
...
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Meteor Lake IPU vendor: Lenovo driver: intel-ipu6
    bus-ID: 00:05.0 chip-ID: 8086:7d19
  Device-2: Intel Meteor Lake-P HD Audio vendor: Lenovo
    driver: sof-audio-pci-intel-mtl bus-ID: 00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:7e28
...

lspci -nnk -s 00:05.0

00:05.0 Multimedia controller [0480]: Intel Corporation Meteor Lake IPU [8086:7d19] (rev 04)
        Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:231f]
        Kernel driver in use: intel-ipu6
        Kernel modules: intel_ipu6

cam -l

[0:53:08.032587075] [12767]  INFO Camera camera_manager.cpp:326 libcamera v0.5.1
[0:53:08.037686251] [12768]  INFO SimplePipeline simple.cpp:1695 No sensor found for /dev/media0
Available cameras:

Any ideas how to get the camera working ?

BR
Jens

1 Like
2

Welcome to openSUSE.

I tried surfing on this device and I learned a few things.

New laptops with Intel IPU6 cameras don’t use the standard USB Video Class (UVC) protocol, but instead use a MIPI CSI2 data bus directly connected to the CPU. This requires a modern camera stack like libcamera and PipeWire to work. Specific sensors, like the OVTI08F4:00 on the your PC, require proper driver and firmware support. I read that a complete software stack is needed, which includes a compatible kernel driver, firmware, and user-space components like PipeWire.

Your journal output already confirms that the intel-ipu6 kernel module is loaded and it has found a supported sensor: OVTI08F4:00.

With regard to the firmware, do you have kernel-firmware-intel installed? Checking my PC (with different hardware) and checking the contents of that package, I note that package includes ipu6 firmware so please confirm it is installed.

I have also read of many users having issues with this cameara.

You could also check the dmesg content for that camera? ie
sudo dmesg | grep ipu6
But honestly, I do not believe that will provide any more useful information. I think that the issue is LEAP-15.6 is not yet packaged to support this camera.

On a different GNU/Linux distribution I read it requires libcamera version >= 0.3.2

When I checked the openSUSE page:
https://software.opensuse.org/package/libcamera

I read there is no official package available for openSUSE Leap 15.6, but there is an openSUSE packaged 'experimental version is 0.2.0 for LEAP-15.6, which falls short of being >= 0.3.2.

However tumbleweed has version 0.5.1. So out of curiousity I downloaded Tumbleweed 0.5.1 version rpm, and looked at its change history.

I found this:

* Mon Aug 12 2024 Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@inai.de>
- Update to release 0.3.1
...
  * The IPU6 is now supported by the SoftISP and Simple Pipeline
    handler and the Onsemi AR0144 is now supported by libipa. A
    new control has been added to support setting and reading of
    Gamma, and gamma control has been added to the RKISP1 IPA.

From that I note:

“The IPU6 is now supported by the SoftISP and Simple Pipeline handler”

… I believe this means (for Tumbleweed with the newer libcamera version) that the Intel IPU6 camera is now supported by two of libcamera’s internal processing pipelines: the SoftISP (a software-based Image Signal Processor) and the Simple Pipeline handler. Which means this allows libcamera application to interface with and process images from Intel IPU6 cameras.

OK. … but I then asked myself. Is libcamera necessary ? Do all apps use libcamera?

I think that all apps DO NOT need to use libcamera (BUT some do need it).

Previous, prior to libcamera, I think many apps would use V4L2. I think this was common for webcams and other simple camera devices for many years, and most existing Linux applications, such as various video conferencing software, still use the V4L2 API. However times are changing and while V4L2 works well for simple USB cameras, but it may not be as well-suited for the complex, modern cameras found on single-board computers and laptops, where I believe the IPU6 may fall in that later category.

Still, I am not convinced even with libcamera 0.3.1 (or 0.3.2 ? ) that this will work. Why? because I checked Support Arrow Lake architecture with OVTI08F4 sensor · Issue #373 · intel/ipu6-drivers · GitHub where this is very current and it reads that users across most distributions (all ? ) are struggling to get this camera to fully work. Purportedly Lenovo is working on a solution if one can believe the latest link. There may be some hacks available, as indicated in the links I provided but that is not something I can help with.

Possibly your best the best chance here is to hope someone with same hardware on openSUSE has this camera fully working.

Good luck on this. If you succeed to get it working, please share your solution.

3

This is a Tumbleweed thread. This can also be seen in the inxi output. So all (AI generated?) Leap 15.6 content here is off topic.

It is known for years that s.o.o is broken and does not show official Leap 15.6 packages. s.o.o shouldn’t be used or advertised as it is broken as mentioned and animates users to add useless and broken additional repositories (including home, devel and no longer existing SLE SP ones).

4

Yes. Again - I’m bad here.

For the op, do you have libcamera installed? v.0.5.1. is available for Tumbleweed.

5

Further to this, I note in the Lenovo Linux forum this thread on the Lenovo X1 carbon gen-13 where the IPU6 has issues:
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Other-Linux-Discussions/Camera-drivers-for-Linux-Carbon-X1-Gen-13/m-p/5392554

… the thread refers specifically to Ubuntu, but my belief is that this is consistent across all GNU/Linux distributions.

The most curent post in that thread (dated August 6th, today) states:

2025-08-06 04:03:54

Re:Camera drivers for Linux - Carbon X1 Gen 13
Yep - we have it working and I there should be a Ubuntu image available with it enabled if you want to give it a go (it’s in testing by QA right now). Send me a PM if you would like to try it

Note - if you’ve not purchased the system, my recommendation is still to avoid the MIPI camera as support is not fully upstream yet and it’s a bit of a pain. But it does work under Ubuntu (other distro’s not yet) and Intel are making progress with upstream so the situation is improving.

Mark

I am especially curious, as I am eyeing the Lenovo X1 Carbon Generation 13 as a possible replacement for my older Lenovo X1 Carbon Generation 9, sometime in the next year. Granted the Lunar Lake (in the Gen-13) is different from Meteor Lake (which is different from some of the other newer Intel GPUs) but often the graphics aspects in the latest intel chips have some similarity and can share the same issue at times.

I have not checked (yet) the Lenovo Linux forum for the Thinkpad X1 2-in-1 with Intel Meteor lake yet, to see if there are any words there for the IPU6 camera.

Good luck.

6

OK, so I looked for the Thinkpad X1 2-in-1 on the Lenovo forum. I found this link.
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Other-Linux-Discussions/Linux-support-of-ThinkPad-X1-2-in-1-Gen-9/m-p/5340256?page=1#6458449

at the end I note this post:

As a note - we don't sell the system with Linux preloaded and the MIPI camera; because of the issues with it. We didn't certify the MIPI camera with Ubuntu (but did work with Intel and Canonical to get it working)

I see you tried the steps on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lenovo - they should work on this platform. Just to confirm you followed the 24.04 steps?

As a note - you cannot use Cheese/Snapshot to test the camera. You need to use your browser - recommended is https://webcamtests.com/

This is a limitation of the pipewire implementation and support in Cheese/Snapshot

Mark

My understanding is the IPU6 is a MIPI camera. That Lenovo post I reference does not mention firefox nor teams. Hopefully thou, the work Lenovo did with Intel and with Canonical helped - and hopefully that means functionality with this camera is possible for your specific laptop.

7

A ‘bit off topic’ (as unfortunately this won’t help the OP, other than perhaps to give another program to prove their Lenovos laptop’s web cam is not working in Firefox browser) is this browser based internet test:

I found this an interesting test for browser compatibility in both Firefox and GNU/Linux.

Unfortunately I won’t help the OP (other than to provide an additional test).

8

Hello,

thanks for the ideas. I’ve already installed the latest Intel firmware. The webcam test tool ends with an error, can’t determine webcam/parameters.

In the meantime I found in the journal the following entries:

Aug 06 08:25:56 nnn kernel: int3472-discrete INT3472:0b: GPIO type 0x12 unknown; the sensor may not work
Aug 06 08:25:56 nnn kernel: int3472-discrete INT3472:0b: cannot find GPIO chip INTC1007:00, deferring

Based on the output, I found an open issue in github

It seems the Intel driver isn’t fixed.

Hope that Intel will fix the issue.

Jens

9

https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1230843

10

I hope the issue with the IPU6 gets fixed… I took a look at the openSUSE bugzilla and there are a couple entries related to the IPU6, although I don’t know how relevant:

Bug 1230843 - Dell laptop latitude 7440, intel-ipu6 camera fails: Unexpected CSR 0x0

Bug 1238508 (CVE-2024-58004) - VUL-0: CVE-2024-58004: kernel: media: intel/ipu6: remove cpu latency qos request on error

You could consider, if it makes any sense to join either of those bug report threads.

Alternatively, and possibly it is better, to consider to write a new bug report. If the openSUSE packagers believe it the same issue, they will close the bug report referencing an already open bug report. But your issue may be different (hence perhaps a new bug report).

You will have to include the diagnostic information you gathered from your laptop on the issue, and if you believe there is anything in the Lenovo threads of value (in regards to work being on Ubuntu) you could add that. Just providing a link may not work as sometimes the developers are too busy to crawl through a long link to find the very specific relevant issue.

Again - my hope is this gets sorted, as I have the Lenovo X1 carbon gen-13 in my future sights as a possible replacement laptop, and given I believe it has the same (similar?) camera, I would like to see this fixed.

11

I see you discovered this while i was sending my post.

and from the Phoronix articles clearly there is work going on here. For example:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/X86_MIPI_CameraHwEnablement

12

Summing up: enabling is going on in Fedora OS by Red Hat engineer Hans de Goede.

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