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Yishu Fang
Asked: 2014-08-13 07:26:41 +0800 CST

What is "camera:/" when I connect my Camera to Kubuntu?

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Using Kubuntu.

When I connect my Camera to the system through an usb cable, a prompt will be shown at the right bottom corner:

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After clicking "Open with File Manager":

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Dolphin opens with the path to be camera:/.

What's the meaning of camera:/ here and how does Kubuntu handle my camera here?

usb

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The 'camera:/' is a KDE kio/kio-slave/protocol. More:

    KIO

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIO

    KIO (acronym of KDE Input/Output) is system library incorporated into KDE Frameworks 5 and KDE Software Compilation 4. It provides access to files, web sites and other resources through a single consistent API. Applications, such as Konqueror and Dolphin,...

    Camera

    http://api.kde.org/4.x-api/kdelibs-apidocs/solid/html/classSolid_1_1Camera.html#_details

    This device interface is available on digital camera devices.

    A digital camera is a device used to transform images into data. Nowaday most digital cameras are multifunctional and able to take photographs, video or sound. On the system side they are a particular type of device holding data, the access method can be different from the typical storage device

    http://www.gphoto.org/doc/manual/using-kde.html

    Open konqueror, enter camera:/ into the URL bar. You can then select the camera (USB cameras are autodetected) and descend into the camera filesystem like any other UNIX directory.

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  2. The linux kernel provides drivers that you can use in order to read/write/use various devices.

    Unlike Windows that creates a drive for hard drivers/cdroms/flash drives etc, linux creates a file with a set of instructions that allow you to access that device. That file is located in /dev/ and the process by witch you access it is called mounting

    So you plug in the camera, the system detects it and it creates that file in /dev/ that you need to mount in order to access. Ubuntu usually auto-mounts the devices for you, and that is probably what you are experiencing there. The usual mount point for devices is in /media/ or /mnt/ depending on the linux distribution (for ubuntu it's /media/).

    You can manually mount and unmount devices using the terminal (ctrl+alt+t) and executing the mount and umount commands which you can use the --help attributes on, read their manual pages using man mount and man umount or google about them.

    You should read a little about the linux file system in order to understand how it does all this and how handy it becomes when you need to expand a folder size or create logical volumes.

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