Installing web camera on Debian Etch

It was about two years ago that I last tried to install my web camera. It was in the Sarge “era” and my Linux knowledge was limited that time, so I got lost in the driver installation procedure and all the other technicalities.

My knowledge of this things didn’t improve much from that time, but Debian did. After installing Etch I tried again and the process couldn’t be simpler.

I connected the camera and Debian recognised it as:

mitja@klopotec:~$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0ac8:301b Z-Star Microelectronics Corp. ZC0301 WebCam

Armed with this knowledge I copy/pasted the Z-Star Microelectronics Corp. ZC0301line into Google Linux and the third link I clicked gave me the solution. It was Zamri’s My Linux Life blog.

First I had to get and install the driver which proved to be “apt-get” simple:

apt-get install gspca-modules-2.6.18-4-k7

And that’s it. After a reboot I opened Kopete and under settings saw the picture of my closet, where my camera was pointing at that time.

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