Hi all, new here, I figured I'd share my experience so that others could benefit, and hopefully save a bunch of time.
I grabbed an Octopi Image(2019-09-26-octopi-buster-lite-0.17.0.img), used Etcher to write it, configured the octopi.txt and octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt, and stuck it in a brand new Raspberry Pi4b.
Booted up, was able to access the unit over ssh and the web browser, all good.
Figured I'd just start with the camera...
Tried an old ArduCam 13MP camera and had no, luck.
Looked for the /var/log/webcamd.log - never present.
Checked the ~/.octoprint/logs/octoprint.log and there is no mention of webcam.
Installed the Arducam drivers, in case that was it, didn't work.
Spent hours and hours digging around here in the forums over the course of a few weeks, to no avail (I did find other reports of the missing webcam.log though).
So I assumed the Arducam wasn't supported, which is fine, and plugged in a cheap NexiGo webcam instead.
Reconfigured /boot/octopi.txt for a usb cam, and rebooted.
No luck.
Read lots more, tried manually starting mjpg_streamer, and it worked right away...
Yet setting the same settings in /boot/octopi.txt didn't work.
Went digging around a bunch more and eventually found that OctoPi installs a System Service, webcamd.
BTW, found the service in the usual place
/etc/default/webcamd
that uses
/etc/init.d/webcamd
Which is all just a roundabout way of running
/root/bin/webcamd
Checked the systemctl status, and found:
$ sudo systemctl status webcamd
● webcamd.service - the OctoPi webcam daemon with the user specified config
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/webcamd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: activating (start) since Sat 2020-10-17 18:22:51 PDT; 54s ago
Cntrl PID: 1169 (webcamd)
Tasks: 2 (limit: 4915)
Memory: 1020.0K
CGroup: /system.slice/webcamd.service
├─1169 /bin/bash /root/bin/webcamd
└─1185 sleep 120
Oct 17 18:22:51 octopi webcamd[1169]: -----------------------------------------------
Oct 17 18:22:51 octopi webcamd[1169]: Found video devices:
Oct 17 18:22:51 octopi webcamd[1169]: /dev/video0
Oct 17 18:22:51 octopi webcamd[1169]: /dev/video1
Oct 17 18:22:51 octopi webcamd[1169]: /dev/video10
Oct 17 18:22:51 octopi webcamd[1169]: /dev/video11
Oct 17 18:22:51 octopi webcamd[1169]: /dev/video12
Oct 17 18:22:51 octopi webcamd[1169]: readlink: invalid option -- 'r'
Oct 17 18:22:51 octopi webcamd[1169]: Try 'readlink --help' for more information.
Oct 17 18:22:51 octopi webcamd[1169]: Scan again in two minutes
So its trying to check all the video devices and choking.
Found you can also see the whole log file (helps when systemctl status doesn't show enough lines) with
journalctl -u webcamd
Read around some more, and tried mjpg_streamer again adding a specific device (-d /dev/video0), and it kept working.
So added "-d /dev/video0" to my "camera_usb_options" in /boot/octopi.txt
Rebooted and it now works.
No clue how to fix the readlink issue, but onto setting up the printer..
Hopefully, it will go much more smoothly.