Q I have just been given a new digital camera (manufactured by Trust), and I have been unable to get DigiKam to recognise it. However, /var/log/messages seems to detect that a device has been added to the USB port, and the camera is powered up. I don't know anything about USB, but I do know that an entry does not exist in my /etc/fstab. Could this be the problem? Is KDE's DigiKam the best software to use?
A You don't need an entry in fstab for KDE's automounting to work. In fact, it generally works best without such an entry. However, not all digital cameras work as USB mass storage devices; some use camera-specific protocols. Does /var/log/messages show partitions when you connect the camera, in much the same way you would see with a USB memory stick? Something along these lines would indicate that it is a mass storage device:
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning Vendor: NIKON Model: NIKON DSC E3200 Rev: 1.00 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02 SCSI device sda: 2012160 512-byte hdwr sectors (1030 MB) ... SCSI device sda: 2012160 512-byte hdwr sectors (1030 MB) sda: sda1
If not, this camera doesn't show itself as a storage device. But DigiKam should still recognise it if it is supported by Gphoto2, and you have Gphoto2 installed. Gphoto2 is the command-line client for libgphoto2, which is used by DigiKam. If you don't have it installed, you should find it on your distro's discs. You should run it as a normal user and as root - any difference in the output will indicate a problem with permissions. To find out if your camera is supported, run
gphoto2 --auto-detect
and note what it shows. If your camera is not recognised, check the archives of the mailing lists at www.gphoto.org and send the developers details about your camera. DigiKam is a fine program for managing digital photos, but if all you want to do is copy pictures from the camera, you can do that with Konqueror, by typing camera:/ in the location bar. This will show a list of any connected cameras that libgphoto2 recognises.