Mount USB
 

I have Mandrake 8.1. I was wondering if it is possible to mount something that it is attached to a UsB port?

Unless it's an external harddrive, you don't mount a USB device. You'll just need a driver if the standard ones that come with mandrake don't work. What is it you are wanting to attach?

I am trying to get my computer to interface with my Digital Camera. I am trying to use a program called kamera and it wants a path to the camera. I was hoping that I could figure out how to direct it to the USB port where the camera interfaces with the PC.

have you tried gPhoto? http://www.gphoto.org/

If your USB Digital camera uses a standard compact flash interface like many of the newer cameras do, including my Nikon 885 and many other cameras, then getting it to work under linux is simple and doesn't require gphoto. If it uses a non-standard interface then check out gphoto and ignore the below information....


Ok, first things first, you need the USB Bulk Media driver compiled into the kernel, or loaded as a module. You also need generic scsi support and support for scsi drives compiled into the kernel. The reason for this is the USB Bulk Media driver emulates a scsi device. If you need help with this send me an e-mail and I will be more specific about how to do this (jtshaw@resnet.gatech.edu).

Plug in the camera, wait a few seconds, and type dmesg at the command line. The end of the dmesg should contain a bunch of information about the USB Bulk media driver initialization. If you cat /proc/scsi/scsi you should see something that resembles this:

Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: Nikon Model: E885 Rev: 1.0n
Type: BULK ANSI SCSI revision: 02

You can now mount the device. You mount it as if it is a scsi device. In my case, since it is the only scsi device on my system, I added the line:
/dev/sda1 /e885 vfat noauto,user,ro 0 0
to my /etc/fstab file. sda1 might be something else in your case if you have other scsi devices, for instance if it was the second device it might be sda2. The noauto switch means the drive will not be mounted at boot, only on request, and the user switch means you don't have to be root to mount this device. I also mount mine read-only for safety sake, and delete the images with my cameras built in menus. Mounting the device after adding a line like that to fstab only requires the command mount /e885.

I hope this helps.

John


...oh ya... now you can access the cameras flash card just like it is a harddrive plugged into your computer, just go to the directory you mounted it at...

Smart Media?
 

Will this method also work for Smart Media? If so, I would like to give it a try though I will need some help since I am very new to Linux.

Yep, it does work for some smart media cameras. The limiting factor is whether or not your camera talks with a standard protocol over USB or some proprietary protocol. What kind of camera do you have?

Digital Camera
 

I have an Olympus C3030-z

Ok... Olympus used a propietary protocol until the C3040Z so you will have to go the route of gphoto. The good news is gphoto does supposively support your camera. They have all sorts of documentation on there website.

Does anyone know of a list of which cameras support the standard CF interface.
I have a Canon digital IXUS V (also known as PowerShot S110) which uses CF cards. I would be interested to know if this system would work for me.

cheers

Probably Incomplete.... but here is a list of some cameras that do support the bulk media format.

Casio 2x00, 3x00

Minolta Dimage 7

Nikon Coolpix 775,885,995,5000

Olympus C-200Z, C-860L, C-2040, C-3040Z

HP PhotoSmart 315, 618, 912

Fuji 1400Zoom, 2400Zoom, FinePix 4700Zoom, 4900Zoom, 1300, 4500

Leica Digilux 4.3

Sony DSC-F505, DSC-F505V

You can also spend the $30 and get a little flash card to USB connector thingy and I believe that should work on any CF card.

John,

Hope I can pick your brains...

I've been trying unsuccesfully for the last week and a bit to compile my kernel with SCSI emulation. Gave up in the end when I was given an old computer with a SCSI HDD and I scrounged a SCSI card from my dad. I've resintalled Mandy and it recognises the HDD perfectly. Great, at last - SCSI support!

Howver, I only have /dev/sda1, how do I create /dev/sdb1, so I can mount my camera there? (Finepix 2400.)

Please don't tell me it's a recompile job!

Cheers,

Rob

What you need is the mknod command.

Typically /dev/sdb1 would be created with
mknod /dev/sdb1 b 8 17
mknod can only be run as root on my configurations.
For scsi devices the first number is always an 8, numbers 0-15 represent /dev/sda - /dev/sda15, 16 would be /dev/sdb... and so on.

John

I had this working, without having to follow your advice actually. I just typed

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/fuji and it just magicaly worked.

Anyway, I took out my SCSI HDD because I didn't need it in this machine and was thinking about using it in another. Unfortunately, I can't mount sdb1 anymore at all.

I've tried everything, including reinstalling Mandrake.

If I try

mknod /dev/sdb1 b 8 17

you can see the /dev/sdb1 directory, but there's no link when you do

ls sd* -l

as there is for the physical SCSI HDD (which I reinstalled!).

When I try mounting /dev/sdb1 it tells me

/dev/sdb1 is not a valid block device.

Any idea what I might have done to mess this all up and what I need to do to fix it?

Sorry to bother you with this again.

Cheers,

Rob

Well - if I read that correctly...

If you were mounting to /dev/sdb1 - and it worked.. then you pulled out your SCSI drive - it would then switch to /dev/sda1 .... reinstalling it wouldn't have fixed it.

I have just done this all on my Thinkpad laptop. I have a Zio! SmartMedia card reader, which uses the MicroTech SmartMedia module in the 2.4.17 kernel. It was cheap to buy, only about $40 if I remember right.

Another thought you might want to take into consideration... when I first started using Linux again (note again, it's been a while) I was having ALL kinds of problems recompiling the kernel. I've since found out that GCC 2.9.6 is extremely buggy. I would recommend either downgrading to 2.9.5 or upgrading to 3.0.3 - which should solve your compiling problems. Until "I" did this, I got tons of kernel errors, segmentation faults, locking up in boots... you name it I got it.. which is extremely frustration for a new user of Linux.

Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions, I'll help you out best as I can.