camera works only as root

blibbleage · Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 5:17 pm Post subject: camera works only as root

Hi

I know there's a few threads around with the above title, but I've read all that I could find with no success. As stated, my Kodak DX3600 camera only works (using gphoto2 --shell) as root. I've tried editing /etc/hotplug/usb/usbcam to use "chmod 0666" instead of "0600" but that doesn't help. Any ideas on what to try next would be great.

I'm using kernel 2.6 and udev, and the camera was working fine until about a week ago. It might have been an update to udev that caused the problems, but I'm not sure about that. If you want me to run further tests, I'm happy to - just say what you need.

Thanks!

blaster999 · Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 5:26 pm Post subject:

Are you a part of the "usb" group? Type "groups" to find out.
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blibbleage · Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 6:27 pm Post subject:

Yes, I am:

all-inc. · Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 6:42 pm Post subject:

no debug messages? perhaps gphoto2 has a --verbose option or similar
pls show us a ` dmesg | tail -n 15 ` :wink:

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blibbleage · Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2005 7:03 pm Post subject:

Sorry! I knew there was something I forgot to put in the post. There are debug messages:

all-inc. · Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2005 10:56 pm Post subject:

hmm, because the debug messages doesn't show which /dev files are used by the program, run it as root, and then use lsof to see which files are opened by gphoto2.
-> emerge lsof
better, use
/usr/sbin/lsof -p $(pidof gphoto2)

and then, close gphoto2 and run
lsof | grep <interface name you got by the above command>
to see if any programs are still using this dev, for some weird reasons ^^

cya
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blibbleage · Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 8:34 am Post subject:

Here's the relevant output text. I wasn't sure if I should check for the /dev items or the /proc/bus/usb so I did both.

gphoto2 running at this stage....

blibbleage · Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 8:36 am Post subject:

If it's any help, I've now tried it with another camera (the Sony DSC-W1) with exactly the same results (works as root, not as user)

all-inc. · Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 2:39 pm Post subject:

hmm, alright
/dev/pts are the device files for your shell (you have three opened: stdin, stdout, stderr)
/proc/bus/usb/002/004 is the only file that seems to me being the one.
what showes ls -l /proc/bus/usb/002/004 ?
if only root can read/write, that's the trick, i guess.
perhaps lsof has another output when gphoto2 is just downloading pics from the camera.
if you can write at /proc/bus/usb/002/004 as normal user and the error occurs again, try lsof when downloading a pic.
otherwise just change the perms with 'chmod o+wr /proc/bus/usb/002/<current file>' or, if you are in the 'root' group(i hope you don't ^^) chmod g+rw ...

another idea is to start gphoto2 as normal user with xtrace...but let us first try the stuff above.
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blibbleage · Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 4:46 pm Post subject:

Here's the results of ls (it was assigned to a different number this time I plugged it in).

all-inc. · Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2005 5:55 pm Post subject:

yeah, this is a job for the hotplug usb agent

blibbleage · Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2005 11:33 am Post subject:

Excellent, that works. Thank you!

one-bit · n00b Joined: 11 Mar 2005 Posts: 6

Add group"camera" to gentoo box and your user to this group.
Utilize usbcam.group scripts

safeness · Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2005 10:23 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the tip one-bit. This worked great for me!