After a recent update to current where hotplug is not run when using a 2.6.x kernel in conjuntion with udev my digital camera stopped working in digikam. I've figured out so far that I can access the camera when logged in as root so the hardware is fine. Previously I had configured hotplug to take care of permissions so that any one in the "camera" group could access the camera. I know how to write udev rules but the problem with this is that my camera is not a USB mass storage device. It's a Canon Powershot A75 that is supported fully in libgphoto.

It seems that I can't fix this through udev. Has anyone else run into this and come up with a solution? I've checked gphoto documentation on their website and they talk extensively about getting regular users to access a camera with hotplug, but not how to deal with it with udev.

From the Aug 12 Section of the -current changelog:

a/hotplug-2004_09_23-noarch-9.tgz: Skip rc.hotplug if a new enough udev
is running on a 2.6 kernel. No wonder the boot time didn't seem faster! :-)

Currently running udev-097-i486-10 and kernel 2.6.17.13.

Any input is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Brian

You'll have to write a udev rule for the camera and then it'll work fine. That's what I had to do. I'm not on my Linux box at the moment but a bit of googling should turn up the correct way to write the rule.

That would work great if the camera was a usb mass storage type, however, it isn't. The access to it is provided by libgphoto2. No device ever gets created at all. This is where my hang up is. Does your camera show up as /dev/sdxx when you connect it?

I must be missing something simple.

Thanks,

Brian

Here is how I got my Epson PhotoPC 850Z, which needs libgphoto2 & digikam, to work:
1) Connected my camera to a USB port & turned it on. Checked 'dmesg' to ensure it was detected, then ran 'lsusb' & noted the ID number.
2) Installed libgphoto2, ver 2.2.0. I used the Freerock Gnome package, because I happened to have it.
3) Checked all of the files in /usr/doc/libgphoto2-2.2.0. In the CHANGES file there is the line:
I did this as root, using the command:
This gave me a huge camera.rules file. I deleted all lines except the one that applied to my camera.
4) I moved the camera.rules file to the /etc/udev/rules.d directory & tried it with digikam, but it did not work for my user. However, it did work for root. Figuring that the problem was only permissions & knowing that the udev rule was running the "/etc/hotplug/usb/usbcam" script in an attempt to set permissions, I decided to modify the rule to do it all.
5) I modified my camera.rules from:
to:
6) I'm not using the SYMLINK. I put it in so I could use it to determine what device was actually being created. There are also only two users on this machine, so I could probably get by with 'GROUP="users"', but the above rule is working with digikam, so I am not inclined to change it.
Regards,
Bill

This worked perfectly! Thanks.

Thanks, I found this searching for a solution to the same problem. Digikam can now see my camera, but does not start when hotplugging the camera.

I finally got this working on Slackware 11.0 with my Kodak LS743 using the above except that I apparently had to use MODE="0660" instead of MODE="660". Digikam now seems to work fairly reliably.

Thanks TSquaredF, that worked for me too.