Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a Saturday tweet that a fix for an issue that disables the dashcam on the electric vehicle (EV) maker’s cars will soon ship as part of an upcoming update.
Earlier this month, Tesla North reported on an issue with Tesla software version 2022.12.3.2 (and other 2022.12.3.x versions) that renders the dashcam unusable. Affected users see an error message that reads “Dashcam unavailable” and instructs them to “check USB drive.”
The dashcam will not record when you drive a Tesla that is spitting out this error message, and Sentry mode won’t work properly either.
“Problem arose from optimizing application performance,” Musk explained in response to a Twitter user asking about a fix. “Use of Linux page cache caused increasing memory fragmentation, eventually preventing mounting of dashcam.”
Problem arose from optimizing application performance. Use of Linux page cache caused increasing memory fragmentation, eventually preventing mounting of dashcam. Patch to filesystem driver fixes this. Update coming soon.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 28, 2022
The issue will be fixed with a filesystem driver patch that will be deployed in a software update, which Musk said is “coming soon.”
Until Tesla rolls out a fix, there are a few possible workarounds you can use to get rid of the error messages for a while. They include unplugging the USB drive in your Tesla and plugging it back in, or a system reboot of the car. You can also try formatting the USB drive or switching to a different USB stick altogether.
Tesla North can confirm in our case, that formatting 2 to 3 times in a row usually fixes the issue. So far with the recent 2022.12.3.12 software update, we have yet to experience the dashcam bug (knock on wood).
