mjhjmtu

I am quite new at Linux and I have to install this SwissRanger camera on Ubuntu. I am trying to follow their USB mounting instructions and I got stuck.

From the instructions:

Modify the usbdevfs entry in /etc/fstab 
by setting devmode appropriately, for example:
usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs devmode=0666,noauto 0 0

I am not sure how to obtain the usbdevfs program, and also after which, does it automatically mean that the camera will be automatically mounted everytime I plug in the USB?

Edit: There is no direct web-link, it is in a folder after running
libmesasr-dev-1.0.14-706.i386.deb
under the webpage
http://www.mesa-imaging.ch/drivers.php

"usbdevfs" is not a program. The third line is the edit that must be made to the /etc/fstab file.
What you can try is open up the /etc/fstab file using any text editor you are comfortable with. Note that you have to be root to edit that file. Then, just copy and paste the third line, i.e.

usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs devmode=0666,noauto 0 0

at the end of the file. Save it, and restart your machine. Check if the camera gets mounted automatically.

add this to your fstab

/dev/sda1 /media/usb auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

then mount the camera by issuing

mount /dev/sda1

and have read/write access to it.

Depending on what version of Ubuntu you have, in the past
I've plugged in the camera into the USB port and it instantly showed up on cheese.

The /etc/fstab line

usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs devmode=0666,noauto 0 0

does not mean the camera specifically. It is for the USB device filesystem, which allows "raw" userspace access to USB devices.

So it does not mean your camera will always be mounted automatically: it allows user-level tools (often based on libgphoto2 ) to access the camera, so any applications won't need special permissions to access it.

However, the suggestion to change the usbdevfs configuration in /etc/fstab is obsolete advice that is most likely not needed.

The documentation for gPhoto says:

4.3.5. USB ports on Linux (obsoleted by udev, dirty world-writable hack)

In ancient times, before the arrival of udev, one usually needed to
mount the "usbdevfs" or later "usbfs" to /proc/bus/usb. One particular
mount option allowed the whole usb filesystem (i.e. all mice, card
readers, and all other USB devices) to be made group or world
writeable.

Obviously, this kind of “security” is no security and should thus be
avoided. Additionally, since udev exists now, just use udev. You can
look up how to shoot yourself in the foot with usbdevfs... where?
Well, just use udev. After all, this is almost the year 2007, not
1997.

In year 2018, most modern Linux distributions will automatically grant the necessary usbdevfs permissions to the user logging in locally, so you won't have to do anything. If you need access to your USB devices remotely (e.g. when logging in over SSH), you can usually do that by adding a specific group membership to your user account. This group might be named plugdev: check your distribution's documentation for details.

Here's the command to make your user account a member of the plugdev group:

sudo usermod -a -G plugdev <your username here>