Macbook webcam works but breaks with kernel update

Ask Fedora Ask in English
1

I have Fedora 31 on a Macbook Pro. The webcam doesn’t work out of the box but I followed the instructions here (https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie/wiki/Get-Started) and it is working fine.

I noticed today that it was not working, and I tracked it down to the kernel version. If I reboot to kernel 5.5.17, the version I had when I ran the instructions above, it works. If I reboot again to my more recent 5.6.7, it doesn’t.

I have two options:

  1. Update the webcam instructions somehow to work with my current kernel. I don’t know how to do that. Do I just follow the instructions again and just reinstall, and keep doing that every time a kernel update occurs?
  2. Since I use my webcam infrequently, I don’t mind keeping the old kernel (5.5.17) and just rebooting in to it when I want to use my webcam. However, I see that my old kernels are automatically deleted, and it keeps 3 at a time. How can I “lock” the 5.5.17 to prevent deletion?

Thanks!

2

Try reinstall driver, should work.

3

I did figure out how to lock a certain package or kernel, I should have searched that earlier. It’s what I’ve done for now.

I’ve had Fedora for about 3 weeks now and already have had 3 kernel updates, I don’t want to keep reinstalling the driver everytime there is a kernel update.

1 Like