How to install a Sony Vaio MotionEye webcam driver (ricoh r5u870) on Kubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

The webcam (Sony Vaio VGN-FZ21M, this guide applies to almost every Sony Vaio notebook webcam model though) was a bit tricky. I've tried multiple drivers, including the mediati one. At some point I even had to recover my system by booting from an installation CD, mounting my hard drive and removing the driver files and configuration entries in /etc/modules manually, because my Hardy Heron's attempts to load the driver at boot were going into failure/retry dead loop.

The one that worked for me was a driver package from palmix.org. Here's my installation steps:

1. Author claims that r5u870 module is not compatible with the module uvcvideo, so check if you have it installed and remove it first if necessary.
2. Current Kubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron uses kernel version 2.6.24, so the appropriate driver distribution is this one: r5u870-0.11.2.
3. Kubuntu distribution had kernel headers already installed, so you can proceed further. Otherwise you will need to install at least linux-headers-generic package
4. Unpack the driver:
   tar xvfz r5u870-0.11.2.tar.gz
cd r5u870-0.11.2
   
5. Build driver:
   sudo make
6. Install driver:
   sudo make install
7. Push the newly-build module into kernel:
   sudo modprobe r5u870
8. The webcam should become available immediately. Test it with Skype, Cheese or whatever. (the device for webcam will be /dev/video0)
9. Now, if it works, add it to autoboot. Under root privileges, open /etc/modules and add the following lines:
   r5u870
videodev
video-buf
v4l1-compat
v4l2-common
   It's a small letter "L" in "v4l1-compat" and "v4l2-common", not capital letter "i".
10. Save the file.
11. Keep the original installation directory — in case your kernel version is updated, you will need to repeat the steps 5-7.
    

That should be it.

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