Webcam not working on Ubuntu 20.04 after recent kernel update

My builtin webcam stopped working after a kernel update issued after 22 April 2020 . Before this date i was able to take pictures on cheese and video call etc , and for a while i didn't use my webcam until yesterday i noticed that my webcam is getting detected as "usb 2.0 web camera" but its not working at all . Cheese shows a black screen when opened and Firefox asks for permission and then nothing happens . So i changed the kernel to version 5.0 and webcam started working properly . But i need to work it on the latest Ubuntu kernel . Any help will be thankful .

output of sudo lshw:

*-usb:1 description: Video product: USB 2.0 Web Camera vendor: Alcor Micro, Corp. physical id: 2 bus info: usb@1:1.2 version: 0.08 capabilities: usb-2.00 configuration: driver=uvcvideo maxpower=200mA speed=480Mbit/s

3 Answers

issue got solved with kernel 5.4.0-37-generic .

For me there was permission issue.

The group and permissions for your /dev/video* files were icorrect. The group root for your /dev/video* will deny access to the camera for users outside this group.

The output of ls -l /dev/video0 should look like this:

crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 1 Apr 19 22:25 /dev/video0
crw-rw----+ 1 root video 81, 1 Apr 19 22:25 /dev/video1

Try fixing the group by running:

sudo chown root:video /dev/video*

Then fix permissions by running:

sudo chmod 666 /dev/video*

It worked!!

In my case I don't know what the issue was but:

1. Go to BIOS and disable the cam.
2. Restart.
3. Go to BIOS and enable back the camera.

This helped me.