Hello,
I'm new to both Linux and this board and I'm relieved to have found such an active support forum!
I am runnung Red Hat Professional Workstation and need to get my digital camera up and running. The camera is a Minolta Diamge Z1...it connects via a mini-USB and is listed on the info panel under USB devices with the camera name, so the OS is reading it. I just have no idea how to get the Pics off the camera because it isn't on the list of cameras in the digital camera config.....can it be mounted as a mass storage device and accessed in that manner? If so, can someone give me a step-by-step guide for a complete Linux idiot on how to do so? And how to find the device once it is mounted? Don't worry about insulting me with TMI as I know next to nothing about Linux....

Thanks!
Serenity

Most cameras can be configured as either a PTP camera device or as a USB Mass Storage Device.

If you have the camera configured as a PTP, then you can use gphoto2 (and GUI apps that are a front end to it, as it's a command line tool) to pull the images off the camera.

If you have it configured as a USB Mass Storage Device, the system will treat it like a hard drive, or CD-ROM drive. You then can mount it and pull the data off. SCSI emulation is used to do this, so SCSI libraries must be installed (usually they are by default).

Thanks for the reply!

So, how does one mount a device? Emphasis on NEWBIE...I can find the consol but that's about it!!!

BUMP!

Unplug the camera. Then plug it in again and run the 'dmesg' command on the console. Hopefully the last few lines will be something like:

usb 1-7: new high speed USB device using address 2
scsi3 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Vendor: Generic Model: STORAGE DEVICE Rev: 1.01
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
SCSI device sdb: 16064 512-byte hdwr sectors (8 MB)
sdb: assuming Write Enabled
sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: sdb1
Attached scsi removable disk sdb at scsi3, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Attached scsi generic sg2 at scsi3, channel 0, id 0, lun 0, type 0
WARNING: USB Mass Storage data integrity not assured
USB Mass Storage device found at 2

Then (in this example) you should be able to mount the device with 'mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt' (as root) and you should see your files in /mnt (or whatever mount point you choose instead).

Did as you suggested with this result:

mount: /dev/sdb1 is not a valid block device


What the heck does that mean? What do I do next??

It means the system cannot see anything there with files in it. What did dmesg say after you plugged in the camera?

One of two things is happening here:

1) the device is a PTP camera, in which case you must use one of the PTP camera applications (XCam, DigiCam, or the console command application gphoto2) to get your pctures off.

2) the device IS a USB Mass Storage Device, but the Mass Storage Device libraries are not loaded, or the device is one of the many hardware devices that have problems with the HotPlug utility in Linux.

I have a script that pulls data from a PTP camera, you may edit these commands as appropriate:

******substitute your camera's id here in place of HP:PhotoSmart,... how the system id's it******

Thanks for your replies,

when I type dmesg it does recognize the camera as a Minolta Dimage Z1 and it does correspond with sdb1...it is definitely a mass storage device and is recognized as such in the GUI info panel under USB devices...is this just a compatibility issue or something that can be resolved? I really don't want to go back to Windows so I'm hoping for a solution!

Thanks!

There are two possible solutions to your problem:

1) Use Standard PTP camera as the camera type in one of the apps like digicam and see if it works...

2) Get a SanDisk ImageMate USB 2.0 single slot SD card reader, and pull the images off of the card.

Oh geez, I forgot all about card readers!!!!

DUH! I can get one that is Linux compatable!!

I can be such a silly A@@ sometimes!

Thanks!!!

The list at

http://www.teaser.fr/~hfiguiere/linux/digicam.html

as well as your dmesg report imply that the camera should work. Are you sure it didn't do a battery saving power-off before you tried to mount it? Command 'fdisk -l' (as root) is also useful to see what devices are connected. Otherwise card readers are handy gadgets.

Just left the site you mentioned... this site

http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showd...20&w=t&s=v&d=a

lists some tweaks necessary for other Minolta models but Z1 isn't on the list...it does list 235 digital cameras though, and gphoto's newest version supports around 400, but not mine either...so i'm guessing the SanDisk ImageMate USB 2.0 is either Linux compatible or easily mounted?

Thanks to all for your help...i'm having some major plug-n-play withdrawl!!!!

The site http://www.linux-usb.org/ lists some devices e.g.

http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/searc...tern=imagemate

but it is probably just as good to google the device name you are interested in along with 'linux' as a key word. Or check the HCL (http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl).