problem mounting USB Mass Storage Interface (Camera)
 

Hey, I wonder if anybody can help me w/ that. On KDE I tried to open the USB directory for my Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ8 camera w/ Konqueror,but it says it's empty. I tried w/ Digikam then, but it tries and tries and tries to connect to the camera and then it says it isn't able to, because the camera is probably not been connected properly or isn't turned on. I tried many times. Sometimes Konqueror or Digikam isn't able to find some destination folder... which also doesn't exist..., or Konqueror says "can't read file /". I can browse my pictures under Windows though.
I never had problems w/ USB devices on my KDE before - I can browse my mp3 player, it works great.

Also, I'm not so familiar w/ Linux yet (I'm not a computer person really - but I do my best), so I usually have to be explained about things in details.

I would appreciate any help.

Best wishes,

Right after plugging in the camera (and powering it on), run
and the last lines should show information about the USB device (camera) you connected. Try to see which device file it uses to connect to the camera; maybe it's sdb1 or something alike. Once you've figured it out, make a directory into which you try to mount the device:
Then try to mount the camera (actually/usually the card inside it):
See if it succeeds or not. Note that you might have to run 'mount' as root, so that's why you first 'su -' to root. Instead you could use 'sudo', which you would do in Ubuntu where the root account is locked: 'sudo mount ...'. The device file (here sdb1) should be the one you figured out from dmesg, or if you just blind-shoot, the camera device anyway. Filesystem should not need to be "told", since the cameras commonly use FAT filesystem which in turn should be automatically detected (if not, you can try to add '-t vfat' to the mount command, without quotes). If the command succeeds, /tmp/cam_mount/ should now show the camera contents. If it fails, then there's something "wrong" - either you didn't use the correct device file, or then the camera does these things in an uncommon way.

Before plugging the camera cable out, umount the device if you succeeded in mounting it, and after that remove the temporary directory (this is also done as root, just like the above):
It is possible that you can't just browse it on Linux; some cameras are designed so that the connection and transfer needs something 'special', which is installed onto Windows when you install the camera drivers or Windows installs them for you, but not on Linux. Some cameras can be mounted as regular mass storage devices and they should work (albeit it's ugly if you ask me), but some can't - cameras supported by the gphoto library can be used via Digikam or other apps that use the library, but not all camera models are supported. Especially new models take some time before they're supported by the library, and some rare models might not be at all.

Error messages could help in here; what the mount command says, what dmesg says, ...

Make sure that on the camera setup menu that the usb setting is set to pc. When it is shipped it is on the other setting.

Edit: I use a Fz15. It is a couple of generations older than your Fz8.

You may want to look at your package manager for usbmount and libgphoto. Upgrading or installing these may help. Or even a digicam upgrade.

I had a similiar problem but with a camera using a different protocal. Cannot remember exactly what I did to get it working but it did involve a lot of trial and error software installs.

My Panasonic is plug and play however.

many thanx
 

Thank you, guys!
Thank you for the advises, you were so helpful.
I followed B0uncer's directions and it worked perfectly.
Thank you for the detailed explination, it was very helpful and very important to me, since I'm not the computer person really and I sometimes feel lost when I have to deal w/ such problems ;)

I wish you all the best!

Brina