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

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.