webcamd-0.1.23 does not start via rc.d

[Hans Petter Selasky]

On Thursday 14 April 2011 11:55:39 Oliver Fromme wrote:
> Matthias Apitz <guru at unixarea.de> wrote:
>  > El día Wednesday, April 13, 2011 a las 06:10:03PM +0200, Oliver Fromme 
escribió:
>  > > Matthias Apitz wrote:
>  > > > I have webcamd-0.1.23 in a 9-CURRENT with ports from CVS from today;
>  > > > even with the correct value in /etc/rc.conf webcamd does not start:
>  > > > [...]
>  > > 
>  > > > It seems to missing something:
>  > > Yes.  You must specify the USB unit and address, which you
>  > > can lookup with usbconfig.  For example, when the camera
>  > > attaches as ugen1.2, you must specify "1.2".
>  > > 
>  > > ...
>  > 
>  > But than the man page of webcamd(8) is incorrect (it says inserting a
>  > line in /etc/rc.conf is enough). And concerning the USB unit addr, I
>  > thought that webcamd(8) will just use the 1st unit which fits, at least
>  > it worked this way when I started webcamd(8) by hand without any
>  > further arguments.
> 
> Well, I don't use the rc.conf entry at all because my webcam
> is usually not plugged in during boot.  I have to use an
> entry in devd.conf instead so webcamd starts when I plug the
> webcam in.  This is why I need the aforementioned wrapper
> script; it simply does not work otherwise.
> 
> I don't remember exactly what was wrong, it's a few months
> ago.  But I can tell you for sure that it did *not* work out
> of the box according to the documentation, so I had to write
> that script.  At that time I assumed that it was some 8-stable
> vs. 9-current thing ...  As I wrote previously, I didn't care
> too much since I got it working with that trivial wrapper
> script.
> 
> Maybe it works out of the box with today's 8-stable, but
> I'm reluctant to try because, you know, "never change a
> running system" ...  ;-)
> 
> Best regards
>    Oliver

There was a bug in this area that was fixed some time back. If you use a 
wrapper script you need to pass the $cdev that is coming from devd to webcamd 
-d xxxx . The reason for this change is to avoid races creating pid files.

Instead of using -B you could get it working like before by adding a "&" to 
the end of the shell line.

--HPS