Install the IPU6 Webcam Driver on Debian 13 (Trixie)

install-intel-ipu6-driver-on-debian-13.md

Install the IPU6 Webcam Driver on Debian 13 (Trixie)

Since kernel 6.10, the IPU6 driver has been included in the mainline kernel. This guide explains how to install the driver on Debian 13 and its derivatives.

Tested Environment

• PC: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12
  • Camera: UHD 8.0MP + IR discrete, with privacy shutter, MIPI, fixed focus, Computer Vision, temporal noise reduction
• OS: Debian GNU/Linux 13 “Trixie”
  • Kernel: 6.12.38+deb13-amd64

Installation Steps

1. Install the required packages

   sudo apt install linux-headers-amd64 dkms git

2. Clone the driver source

   git clone https://github.com/intel/ipu6-drivers
   cd ipu6-drivers

3. Add the DKMS module

   sudo dkms add .

4. Build and install the module

   sudo dkms build ipu6-drivers/0.0.0
   sudo dkms install ipu6-drivers/0.0.0

   Or, simply run:

   sudo dkms autoinstall ipu6-drivers/0.0.0

References

• https://github.com/intel/ipu6-drivers
• https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=297262

After ignoring the problem again, suddenly we already have the kernel with the version 6.19.6+deb13. Provided you additionally use the trixie-backport in Debian that is.
To my surprise, the stock camera app in gnome works now. It still tend to stutter every second or third startup, but it runs smoothly at 30fps in my case. qcam still works as expected, without any stutter. The image is even now not upside down anymore. It now works as expected.
But.
In Firefox, it occasionally works correctly. For example by calling https://webcamtests.com/ for testing, it first recognize the camera, but if it turn off and on again in very short time span, it seems to get stuck at loading the second time. Quite similar to my previous comment. Well, if timed correctly, it can work though. But very unreliable to know if it works correctly. Quite often a problem, since many meeting apps tend to preview you camera first, which usually works. Then after proceeding to the meeting itself, the camera turns of and on too quickly it seems and swosh, Firefox lost the camera signal.

We are getting there. To my knowledge, currently, flatpak doesn't work with libcamera correctly, thus might be the reason why Zoom doesn't work installed as flatpak it seems. Either the MIPI camera, or the driver for it seems to be a tad too sluggish and seems to have trouble if rebooted to fast.

With Debian 13 and 6.19.6 Kernel the ipu6 camera still does not work on ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen12. I get just a black square in Gnome camera app, some kind of gray static in Firefox and qcam shows No sensor found for /dev/media0. On the same laptop with the latest Fedora (I dual-boot there) and 6.18 kernel the camera works. So it looks like old libcamera or firmware issue.

@ibukanov, keep an eye on https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1130114.

Besides using the trixie-backport to upgrade the kernel to 7.0.7 as of now, I now also upgraded libcamera 0.4 to 0.7.
sudo apt install -t trixie-backports gstreamer1.0-libcamera and also for the package libspa-0.2-libcamera.
This ensures that most or all of the libcamera related packages get to be upgraded.

In Firefox, via webcamtest, the camera now starts up reliably without shutting down bluetooth devices (maybe because pipewire crashes entirely or so) and entirely end up in a black screen. If the camera app from Gnome is called, it seems to occasionally does shows a black screen. Nevertheless, it is far more reliable now.

But unfortunately, the auto brightness control is now broken. It tries to adjust the brightness in a PID like manner, but it always spirals out of control and diverges into too bright and too dark in quick succession. Due to that, the fps rate slows down too.

Let's see what the kernel 7.1 and the usbio module will improve.

According to the latest updates in bug=1130114, it seems kernel 7.0.9-1 in unstable got the usbio modules as well. Hopefully we don't have to wait until 7.1 gets backported.