How to Mount a Camera in Linux

Taking a digital camera along while going on a vacation with family or friends is something which almost everyone follows, to capture the essence of the trip. After coming back from the vacation, one of the first things people do is to load the pictures taken into the computer to see how well they have been developed and captured. Then these pictures are shared and sent across to friends and relatives to share your experiences.

To transfer pictures from a digital camera to Linux is a very simple and fast process. Linux is one of the few operating systems that have the ability to mount your camera with all of the pictures on it, making it seem as if it was just another folder on your desktop.

Instructions to mount a camera in Linux

By following these below instructions, you would be having a great time in enjoying all the latest pictures taken were first taken and then transferred to the Linux machine.

Step 1: Switch off / power off the camera to begin with.

Step 2: Most cameras come with a USB cable, which you need to connect first to the camera and then to the computer.

Step 3: Power on the camera and Linux would automatically detect the new hardware and mount the camera’s memory card.

Step 4: If it automatically loads on your desktop, double click on the mounted folder. However, you would need to navigate to the drive using your favourite file manager in case the mounted folder doesn’t show up automatically.

Step 5: When you are done, power off the camera again; this would disconnect the mounted drive from Linux.

Step 6: To end the process, disconnect the USB cable from the computer and the camera.

If the procedure explained above wasn’t of much help to you, you can alternatively follow some other steps to ensure the mounting of a USB camera on Linux

Step 1: Switch off or power off your camera and then plug one end of the USB cord into the camera and the other end into an empty USB port. Then you need to power on the camera again to see if the system recognizes it. If an icon comes up on the desktop, it means that the system has recognized it and the camera has automounted. Now you just need to click on the icon for viewing its contents.

Step 2: Open a command shell, type ‘sudo fdisk –l’, and then press Enter. A list of plugged in physical drives would be displayed and you can locate your device from the list. To create a mount point on the drive, type ‘sudo mkdir /media/external’ into the command shell.

Step 3: Type in ‘sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /media/external -o uid=1000,gid=100,utf8,dmask=027,fmask=137’,  to replace ‘dev/sdb1’ with the name of the device that was found in the previous step. This would mount your USB camera effectively.

To make sure that there is no damage to the camera while following these instructions, the camera should be turned off while being plugged into the computer or being unplugged