Using Ubuntu Edgy, I started to use my camera, and after I plugged it in, a nice little startup screen came up and asked if I wanted to use the camera as a USB device or use PTP. I accidentally clicked PTP, and have not been able to change the setting back ever since.

I know I can go into the Removable Devices setting and change the import command to read something like:

And that would automatically import the photos. But what kills me is that something is going on with my system that I don't understand, and it may not be so easy to get around the problem next time. From what I can tell, this is all happening using hal, which seems to work using a key:value pair, and I tried to google for some sort of documentation explaining how this works, and I found a little bit of info, but I've had no success getting a change to stick. I thought I found a value in an xml file using gconf, but neither changing nor deleting those entries made a difference.

I tried using hal-set-property to change a mount point for the camera, since I noticed the f-spot-import script uses that property to determine whether to use USB or PTP, but this setting only lasts as long as the camera is plugged in. So when I plug my camera back in again, it reverts to the previous setting from that very first setup dialog I received when I first plugged it in.

I like to know what's going on with my system. I want to know what hal is doing and a little bit about how it works, but I've found only documentation for developers that I'm not knowledgeable enough to grasp, and gloss-over explanations for users who don't really want to touch the command line. If someone knows of some documentation or tutorials that explains some of these command-line tools and where they're stored, I would appreciate a link or a push in the right direction, since I've googled in vain for a couple of weeks, now.