How to determine what device to mount for digital cam.

RVDowning · 03-23-2006, 08:25 AM

Using Mandriva 2006

To be able to access my digital cam it seems I need to edit /etc/rc.d/rc.local and add the following two instructions:
/etc/init.d/usb restart
/sbin/modprobe usb-storage

By the way, does the cam have to be plugged in before these instructions are executed at boot time? If it is not plugged in, do I have to plug it in and then execute the above commands manually?

It seems I also have to mount the device using:
mount -t vfat /dev/????????? /mnt/camera

How do I go about finding out what the device is that is to be mounted at /mnt/camera.

theNbomr · 03-23-2006, 10:08 AM

Your question assumes that the make/model of your camera uses the USB Mass Storage interface protocol. As such, it will probably show up as an emulated SCSI device in /dev/sda, or /dev/sdb, ... The device index will depend on existing prior devices like other SCSI drives, flash disks, or SATA hard drives. Assuming you have already loaded the usb-storage module, you can power up the camera and plug in the USB interface. Then inspect dmesg, and look for a reference to the camera.

Here is a sample:

Code:

usb-storage: device found at 6
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
  Vendor: MATSHITA  Model: DMC-FZ10          Rev: 0100
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02
SCSI device sdb: 29120 512-byte hdwr sectors (15 MB)
sdb: Write Protect is off
sdb: Mode Sense: 04 00 00 00
sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI device sdb: 29120 512-byte hdwr sectors (15 MB)
sdb: Write Protect is off
sdb: Mode Sense: 04 00 00 00
sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
 sdb: sdb1
Attached scsi removable disk sdb at scsi6, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
usb-storage: device scan complete

This shows a camera at /dev/sdb1, which makes sense, since /dev/sda is a pre-existing SATA drive.

Once you know the device name, you can mount it just as you describe. It may not be formatted as a VFAT filesystem. Mine is a FAT16.

If your camera uses PTP (or a fairly long list of other proprietary protocols) protocol, the gphoto2 library/application might be what you want. 'gthumb' is a nicer GUI frontend for gphoto2.

Hope this helps.

--- rod.

RVDowning · 03-23-2006, 11:26 AM

Thanks for the help.

Not sure how to read your example. Is "sdb" or "sdb1" used in the mount command?

Also, how do you determine the type of file system?

theNbomr · 03-23-2006, 12:43 PM

sdb is the overall device. sdb1 is a logical partition within the device (remember, this thing is emulating a disk drive). Use the logical partition. Sorry, I accidentally trimmed off a line in the dmesg sample that shows it as type "FAT". It also shows it being mounted as type vfat, so perhaps vfat works as a correct superset of FAT. Hmmm. Perhaps fdisk can display the type of filesystem. I think I might have tried that; can't remeber for sure and I don't have the camera right now to try. If I don't hear of success from you, I will give it a try in about 10 hours time.

--- rod.

RVDowning · 03-23-2006, 06:12 PM

That did it Rod. Thanks for the assist. Now, perhaps I'll pursue why this is not automounting like it is supposed to do. At least I can get to it now.

Really appreciate the help.

Rich

theNbomr · 03-23-2006, 06:59 PM

I did a little further exploring. There is good info at:

http://www.gphoto.org

--- rod.

RVDowning · 03-23-2006, 07:48 PM

I understand I could use the PTP methodology, but I was just trying to get the mass storage way working. I thought it was more convenient -- at least when it was working.

RVDowning · 03-23-2006, 09:39 PM

thought I still had a problem -- the camera kept getting disconnected and turning off. However, it kept turning off when it was no longer connected to the computer. It seems the batteries are shot. At least it is not more software problems.