Hi there!
I've got Slackware and I have a problem with my HP Photosmart E217 digital camera.
How do I access it? How do I get the photos out to put them on hard disk?

I'd be more than glad to find out that...

The usb-storage driver should handle this device properly. I've always had luck with mass storage devices and Linux.

1. Plug the device into your usb port
2. Make sure the usb-storage device driver is loaded, use 'lsmod | grep usb' -- you will then see usb-storage if it is.
3. If usb-storage is not loaded, simply run 'modprobe usb-storage' as root.
4. Run the 'dmesg' command from a console, check the output to make sure it has detected your device properly.
5. If the device is detected properly you will see a line in the output message similar to "usb-storage: Attached device to sda1". This means that your device is waiting at /dev/sda1
6. Mount the device, as root issue the following commands:
mkdir /mnt/camera
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/camera
cd /mnt/camera
7. Your camera should now be mounted on /mnt/camera You can use your favorite file manager to browser through it's directories.

Good luck!

Hi!

Thank you for your kind tip, Slum. Unfortunately it just replied:"not a valid block device".

I have two SATA hard drives as sda and sdb and my flash disk usb memory stick is sdc1
and my mp3 player is sdd1. I tried sde1 for my digital camera but without any luck.
Weird... my memory wonder stick works great and so deos my mp3 player. It's easy to
access them but not my camera.

I even have a scanner attached to usb and it works great too. The driver for a scanner
is not quite made for my Canon N650U but it still works (The default for a Mustek scanner).
My Canon scanner makes weird noise just before scanning but the pictures look good.

Some cameras are USB Mass Storage devices. Others are PTP devices. You can't mount a PTP device like a USB Mass Storage device. Just doesn't work.

First up, though, you should see what is going on (maybe your camera IS a USB Mass Storage device).

Guessing device names is not the best way to go about things. Instead, try (as root):

Ignore all the text that just scrolled by. The screen is now just sitting there. Now, watch the screen as you connect your camera (you may need to put the camera in "playback mode"). This should give you an indication as to whether or not your camera is a USB Mass Storage device. If so, it will also kindly tell you the device name (no guessing).

Now if that didn't turn out nicely, you most likely have a PTP camera. Check out gphoto. Search this forum and there are some guides, I believe.

Hi!

Thank You for Your clever tip! My camera sure is a USB mass storage
device. There is no active driver available for it. Maybe I should look
for an appropriate driver on the Internet (HP site, Linux sites, etc...).

Somethings are sometimes too easy to look for...

If the camera is recognized as a USB Mass Storage device, as you note, then the drivers are already on the kernel (it would be the same driver that allows you to use your MP3 player and memory stick). If the camera is a USB Mass Storage Device, it is, in essence, a fancy memory stick.

Might be a good idea to post the output you received, since it should include a device name. Once you have the device name, you simply need to mount the device with a command based on the one given by Slum.

As a matter of fact, Slum's post is dead on for a USB Mass Storage Device camera. I only made my post on the off chance that you were using a PTP camera (the last two cameras I have used were both PTP and not USB Mass Storage). It took me awhile to figure things out, since everyone seemed to suggest that all was needed was to mount the camera.

Could modify mine a little bit, obviously /dev/sda1 is in use if he/she is using two other usb storage devices depending on the order that hotplug detects the ports.

Thanks for the compliment.