Accessing Minolta Dimage A1 photos under Linux

Some notes on reading photos off my Minolta Dimage A1 (USB) to under Linux. Some of the notes may be useful for accessing photos on other cameras.

Camera Notes

The Minolta Dimage A1 is not supported directly by gPhoto(2) but the CF Card can be accessed as a usb-storge device. I have read that the newer A2 is supported by gPhoto2 using PTP.

UPDATE: May 2005

As I bought another CF card device I now just use a multi-card reader to read the CF Card directly.

Steps

Disclaimer: Please remember that you play with your photo files at your own risk !!

1: Configure and build the kernel

I managed to get it working using 2.4.26/fsdev but here is an extract from my setup for 2.6.10/udev (2.6.9 had some "issues").

(I can not guarantee this is a complete list: also I may have some junk in my config as I upgraded from my 2.4 config (the key module is usb-storage)).

CONFIG_USB=y
CONFIG_USB_DEVICEFS=y
CONFIG_USB_ARCH_HAS_HCD=y
CONFIG_USB_ARCH_HAS_OHCI=y
CONFIG_USB_UHCI_HCD=m
CONFIG_USB_STORAGE=m
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDESCSI=m
CONFIG_SCSI=m
CONFIG_SCSI_PROC_FS=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD=m

After rebooting, I plugging in my camera, switching it on, and ignoring the "Err 5" that shows on the camera LCD display. It appeared as a simulated SCSI device /dev/sda1.

2: Other Configuration

I am now using udevfs and so I added this to my config to give me /dev/camera ;

BUS="scsi", SYSFS{model}="DIMAGE CAMERA ", NAME="%k", SYMLINK="camera"

In /etc/fstab (I have read-only whilst I am tested: I delete the photos using the camera GUI). "noatime" reduces the camera drive accessing.

/dev/sda1    /mnt/usb        vfat  ro,user,noauto,noatime  0 0
/dev/camera  /mnt/camera     vfat  ro,user,noauto,noatime  0 0
none         /proc/bus/usb   usbfs defaults                0 0

3: Get your photos

You have probably guessed it by now: mount /mnt/camera and copy off your photos using your favourite tools e.g.:

> mount /mnt/camera
> cd ~/photos
> cp -r /mnt/camera