I'm weirded out.
I have an Acer Aspire 5515 series laptop which has a webcam built in.
When I open Cheese, it says: "no device found".
Camorama says: "Could not connect to video device. Please check connection".

Neither lspci nor lsusb contain any records that can be a webcam. It's almost like there is no webcam in the system at all.

~$ lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 Host Bridge

00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (Internal gfx)

00:06.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI Express Port 2)

00:07.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI Express Port 3)

00:12.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Non-Raid-5 SATA

00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI0)

00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI1)

00:13.4 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI4)

00:13.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB Controller (EHCI)

00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 14)

00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 IDE

00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)

00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 PCI to LPC Bridge

00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge

00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration

00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map

00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller

00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control

01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS690M [Radeon X1200 Series]

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)

05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)



~$ lsusb

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Bus 002 Device 002: ID 046d:c045 Logitech, Inc. Optical Mouse

Help.

P.S.: Well, I'm beginning to think that the webcam is simply physically broken. I see no other explanation for it not to show up in lsusb.