I have a OpenMediaVault box that I used as a media server at home.

I also have written some basic scripts to automate some things, like for instance, when I connect my Canon camera via USB it'll automatically upload the photos and put it into the right folders.

Unfortunately, I have had some issues over the last couple of years with it. The server wasn't recognising my camera when plugged in, but was recognised when in my Windows laptop. I thought maybe the cable might have been faulty, so started using a little USB SD Card reader instead, but then that stopped working properly, so I bought a new USB cable for the camera.

Worked fine for a few months, but now that has done exactly the same thing; it's not recognised but it works fine with Windows laptop. So therefore, I think it's not the cable now, it must be the server hardware?

After checking dmesg:

[ 140.594156] usb 1-2: new high-speed USB device number 3 using xhci_hcd
[ 140.751292] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=04a9, idProduct=3253, bcdDevice= 0.02
[ 140.751297] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[ 140.751300] usb 1-2: Product: Canon Digital Camera
[ 140.751303] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: Canon Inc.

I don't see any errors in dmesg output, but blkid doesn't show the device.

I'm just a newbie so not sure what the problem could be or what to try?

I've been mounting cameras over usb using gphotofs

Yes, thanks, that's what I do as well.

Actually, you're right, I think I confused myself as I think something else is going wrong. I'll investigate, but thanks for the tip as I was worrying abotu the wrong thing it seems

A card reader should have a storage device ID but cameras like your Canon use the Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) which do not. Basically gphotofs uses fuse and libgphoto2 to emulate a real filesystem.

Something strange is happening to your media box if both stopped working. Could an update have broken it?