CentOS - May 2009 - Video on (video-capable digital) still camera not accessible

I'm looking for any intelligent commentary on this - it may be a
little off topic, but I'm wondering if anyone knows about this.  This
isn't short, so bear with me.

Yesterday, I tried to download a video off of one of my digital still
cameras that also takes videos (Canon Powershot SX10 iS) on my CentOS
x86_64 5.3 system.  When I plugged the camera into a USB port and
turned it on, it showed no images available, AND no device showed up
mounted for it.  Now, this is not entirely unusual.

I know there's a .mov on the camera, two actually, so I tried putting
the SD card in a card reader and plugged that in.  Nothing.  No "disk"
was mounted, which is what normally happens when I do that.  I ran
lsusb, and got this:

[mhr at mhrichter ~]$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 072: ID 0aec:3260 Neodio Technologies Corp. 7-in-1 Card Reader
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 009: ID 03f0:0205 Hewlett-Packard ScanJet 3300c
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 04f9:0033 Brother Industries, Ltd

That looks normal, but no device is mounted.  I tried doing a
gnome-mount on /dev/sdd and /dev/sde and both came up with a "no data"
error.  I tried mounting /dev/sdd (which is where the device should
be) as a vfat, and that hung.

I got a similar response when I plugged in the camera with the SD card
in it and it shows up in lsusb:

[mhr at mhrichter ~]$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 073: ID 04a9:318d Canon, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 009: ID 03f0:0205 Hewlett-Packard ScanJet 3300c
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 04f9:0033 Brother Industries, Ltd

I even took a photo, just so there would be a recognizable image on
the camera for the Image Importer, and that worked, but the two .mov
files were still not showing up anywhere.

Then I figured, well, maybe if CentOS doesn't like this, my Windows XP
guest might be able to do something with it.  (Hahahahaha!  Not
funny....)

I brought up the Win guest, attached the USB "drive" for the camera
and Windows installed the device just fine.  I opened an Explorer
window and the camera was there, with the photo and two .mov files in
its folder, so I went in and clicked the photo and that was it.  The
Windows guest crashed, and when it came back up, it booted so slowly I
wasn't sure it was going to boot at all, and the network connections
were gone.  I tried a number of things (restart Samba, reboot Windows
in safe mode, then back to normal, restart Samba with Windows running,
on and on).  Nothing worked.  All the TCP/IP settings were the same,
and the network "card" showed one connection that was active, but no
IP address, no path to host, pings all failed, etc.

This morning, I figured that, since the guest network seemed to have
been blown away completely, I'd reconfigure it and try again.

Voila!  All my drives are now sharing properly and the NAT network
between host and guest works just fine.

I am wondering if anyone could hazard a guess w.r.t. these issues:

1) CentOS not seeing either device (camera or SD-in-reader) as mountable

2) How to mount the SD card manually given that it does not appear to
be a vfat (which is how most of these have shown up before IIRC).

3) VMWare losing its network configuration (or whatever it lost) that
smashed its network connection to the host

4) (most important) Any ideas on how to get at the video files on the
SD card (if I can mount it as the right kind of fs, that would be
enough)

Thanks.

mhr

On Wed, 20 May 2009 11:16:44 -0700
MHR wrote:
> Yesterday, I tried to download a video off of one of my digital still
> cameras that also takes videos (Canon Powershot SX10 iS) on my CentOS
> x86_64 5.3 system.  When I plugged the camera into a USB port and
> turned it on, it showed no images available, AND no device showed up
> mounted for it.  Now, this is not entirely unusual.
What comes up in /var/log/messages when you plug the camera into the computer?

-- 
MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Melville Sask ~ http://www.melvilletheatre.com

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 1:16 PM, MHR <mhullrich at gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
> Yesterday, I tried to download a video off of one of my digital still
> cameras that also takes videos (Canon Powershot SX10 iS) on my CentOS
> x86_64 5.3 system. ?When I plugged the camera into a USB port and
> turned it on, it showed no images available, AND no device showed up
> mounted for it. ?Now, this is not entirely unusual.
>
> I know there's a .mov on the camera, two actually,
<snip>

We have a Canon digital still camera. I think we did this once, one
year ago, but am not sure if it was in M$ Windows or Linux. I am
getting ready to leave, but hopefully we can try this, tomorrow. Will
give you feedback, ASAP.

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 1:16 PM, MHR <mhullrich at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I'm looking for any intelligent commentary on this - it may be a
> little off topic, but I'm wondering if anyone knows about this. ?This
> isn't short, so bear with me.
>
> Yesterday, I tried to download a video off of one of my digital still
> cameras that also takes videos (Canon Powershot SX10 iS) on my CentOS
> x86_64 5.3 system. ?When I plugged the camera into a USB port and
> turned it on, it showed no images available, AND no device showed up
<snip>
Our  digital still camera is a very low end Canon PowerShot A460. Your
camera may employ different technology, so YMMV.  A few minutes ago, I
made 3 test videos, each a few seconds in length.  I am using CentOS
5.3 (32 bit, fully updated) and the GNOME Desktop. After I connected
the camera to a USB port and I turned on the camera, it was detected,
immediately, by the same Ap that imports still photos from the camera.
 I imported the 3 .avi files and was able to play each of them,
perfectly, using the Totem Movie Player. Your camera is producing
video files with a different file extension? Our Samsung DVD Camcorder
produces .vob files and in order to upload them to YouTube, I had to
rename them to .jpg or .jpeg or something. But if you cannot download
the video files from your digital still camera to your PC, you do not
have the opportunity to convert them to another file format or rename
them to a different file extension. GL

On Wed, 2009-05-20 at 11:16 -0700, MHR wrote:
<SNIP>
> Yesterday, I tried to download a video off of one of my digital still
> cameras that also takes videos (Canon Powershot SX10 iS) on my CentOS
> x86_64 5.3 system.  When I plugged the camera into a USB port and
> turned it on, it showed no images available, AND no device showed up
> mounted for it.  Now, this is not entirely unusual.
<SNIP>

This sounds oddly familiar. Have you reported a similar problem in the
past?
> I got a similar response when I plugged in the camera with the SD card
> in it and it shows up in lsusb:
<SNIP>
> I brought up the Win guest, attached the USB "drive" for the
camera
> and Windows installed the device just fine.  I opened an Explorer
> window and the camera was there, with the photo and two .mov files in
> its folder, so I went in and clicked the photo and that was it.  The
> Windows guest crashed, and when it came back up, it booted so slowly I
> wasn't sure it was going to boot at all, and the network connections
> were gone.  I tried a number of things (restart Samba, reboot Windows
> in safe mode, then back to normal, restart Samba with Windows running,
> on and on).  Nothing worked.  All the TCP/IP settings were the same,
> and the network "card" showed one connection that was active, but
no
> IP address, no path to host, pings all failed, etc.
So, if I understand this correctly, you have a CentOS host that is
having trouble accessing USB connected devices (your camera and SD cards
plugged into your USB card reader). However, a WinXP guest (running on
the CentOS host you are having trouble with) has no trouble accessing
these devices?

If so, it is unlikely you have a hardware problem...
> This morning, I figured that, since the guest network seemed to have
> been blown away completely, I'd reconfigure it and try again.
> 
> Voila!  All my drives are now sharing properly and the NAT network
> between host and guest works just fine.
Interesting.
> 1) CentOS not seeing either device (camera or SD-in-reader) as mountable
Just a guess. Could it be that VMware is "stealing" this device for
itself? I am fairly certain VMware can "steal" a device for a virtual
machine immediately after the USB device is plugged in.

If I were a betting man, I'd say VMware is interfering.
> 2) How to mount the SD card manually given that it does not appear to
> be a vfat (which is how most of these have shown up before IIRC).
I would be very surprised if it is not formatted as a VFAT partition;
Camera manufacturers have to make devices that use file systems that
will work on both Windows and MAC, leaving very limited options.

I guess the trick is, determining what device to use. You can always
look in dmesg to see what the kernel assigned, or if you are lazy like
me, look at the output of:
        ls /dev/sd?
before and after plugging in the device. The new device is the drive
and /dev/sd?1 will be the partition to mount.
> 3) VMWare losing its network configuration (or whatever it lost) that
> smashed its network connection to the host
Proprietary software. Knock on VMware's door. A colleague that is using
VMware Server (2.0) has been having no end of trouble with virtual
networking. I've been using KVM with great success (considering libvirt
using standard Linux components for networking -- bridges and taps --
instead of custom stuff).
> 4) (most important) Any ideas on how to get at the video files on the
> SD card (if I can mount it as the right kind of fs, that would be
> enough)
I think problem 1 is your real problem and the rest are just symptoms of
that (aside from 3, which may be related but is likely a VMware issue);
solve that and you are dancing!


HTH,
Michael
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On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 7:33 AM, Michael Kralka
<michael.kralka at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This sounds oddly familiar. Have you reported a similar problem in the
> past?
>
Not I.
> So, if I understand this correctly, you have a CentOS host that is
> having trouble accessing USB connected devices (your camera and SD cards
> plugged into your USB card reader). However, a WinXP guest (running on
> the CentOS host you are having trouble with) has no trouble accessing
> these devices?
>
Nah, too easy.  :-)

This is the _only_ USB device my CentOS host is having trouble with.
In fact, I'm in the process of resurrecting an older machine with some
new hardware, but attempting to preserve the old installed WinXP on it
(yeah, I know...) and I'm using my CentOS host and a universal
PATA/SATA-to-USB connector, on the same ports that don't read the
camera, with great success.

The WinXP VM guest can only see the camera - accessing it crashes the
guest and blows up the VM network configuration.
>> 1) CentOS not seeing either device (camera or SD-in-reader) as
mountable
>
> Just a guess. Could it be that VMware is "stealing" this device
for
> itself? I am fairly certain VMware can "steal" a device for a
virtual
> machine immediately after the USB device is plugged in.
>
Possible, but I've run into that before - as long as I make sure
VMware has the device disconnected before boot and after access
attempts, it won't steal it from the main host.
>> 2) How to mount the SD card manually given that it does not appear to
>> be a vfat (which is how most of these have shown up before IIRC).
>
> I would be very surprised if it is not formatted as a VFAT partition;
> Camera manufacturers have to make devices that use file systems that
> will work on both Windows and MAC, leaving very limited options.
>
> I guess the trick is, determining what device to use. You can always
> look in dmesg to see what the kernel assigned, or if you are lazy like
> me, look at the output of:
> ? ? ? ?ls /dev/sd?
> before and after plugging in the device. The new device is the drive
> and /dev/sd?1 will be the partition to mount.
>
Tried all that - no joy.

Thanks, though.

mhr