Solaris 10: USB Digital Camera HOWTO

The following instructions are very "generic", and applicable to all makes/models of digital cameras. Sony DSC-V1 camera was used to show all the examples.

Since the vendor supplied Windows driver cannot be installed on Solaris, it needs some effort to make the digital camera work on Solaris 10. The steps are as follows:

• Bind the device (digital camera) to the ugen driver. Then the ugen driver can talk to the digital camera (device).
  
  ugen is a generic USB driver, which is part of the Solaris USB Driver Development Kit, presents USB devices to applications through a standard read/write UNIX interface.
  
  
  1. Remove the ugen driver from the system, if it was already installed. If in doubt, run the following command anyway:

     % rem_drv ugen 
     Driver (ugen) not installed.

  2. Plug-in the camera to the system; and then run prtconf -v command, to find the device ID for the attached digital camera.

     % prtconf -v
                                 ....   
                 device (driver not attached)
                     Hardware properties:
                         name='usb-product-name' type=string items=1
                             value='Sony PTP'
                         name='usb-vendor-name' type=string items=1
                             value='Sony'
                                 ....
                                 ....
                         name='compatible' type=string items=8
                             value='usb54c,4e.150' + 'usb54c,4e' + 'usbif54c,class6.1.1' + 
                                   'usbif54c,class6.1' + 'usbif54c,class6' + 'usbif,class6.1.1' + 
                                   'usbif,class6.1' + 'usbif,class6'  name='reg' type=int items=1
                             value=00000001
                                 ....

  3. Add the driver alias (usb54c,4e.150 in this example. 054c is the vendor-id for Sony corporation, and 004e is the product-id for DSC-xxx (PTP)) with add_drv command, if this is the first device to be bound to ugen. Run add_drv command, as root.

     % add_drv -m '* 0666 root sys' -i '"usb54c,4e.150"' ugen

     Refer to the man page of add_drv for information about -m, -i flags and use of double quotes in specifying a driver alias that contains numbers.
     
     Note:
     If add_drv command throws an error saying ("usb54c,4e.150") already in use as a driver or alias, that means another device is already bound to ugen. So, to bind the new device to ugen, run update_drv command, as root.

     % update_drv -a -m '* 0666 root sys' -i '"usb54c,4e.150"' ugen

     If update_drv still complains about the driver or alias in use, try to remove the driver and add it again, as explained above
     
  4. Bind this device (digital camera) to ugen by default that have no driver

     % echo "ugen-default-binding=\"usb54c,4e.150\";" >> /kernel/drv/uhci.conf
     % echo "ugen-default-binding=\"usb54c,4e.150\";" >> /kernel/drv/ehci.conf
     % echo "ugen-default-binding=\"usb54c,4e.150\";" >> /kernel/drv/ohci.conf

     
     
  5. Check /etc/driver_aliases and make sure that the correct compatible name is in /etc/driver_aliases

     % grep ugen /etc/driver_aliases
     ugen "usb54c,4e.150"

  6. Reboot the machine (only for the very first time)
     
  7. Plug-in the camera and use prtconf -D to check if ugen has been bound to the device

     % prtconf -D | grep ugen
                 device, instance #1 (driver name: ugen)

  
  
• Use gphoto2, to auto detect the camera. gphoto2 is an application that allows users to operate/download images from digital cameras on Solaris (*nix, in general). On Solaris 10, gphoto2 is available under /usr/sfw/bin directory, by default.

  % gphoto2 --auto-detect
  Model                          Port                                            
  ----------------------------------------------------------
  Sony DSC-F707V (PTP mode)      usb:

• Now either use gphoto2 command line tool or gtkam GUI tool, to download all the photos.
  
  
  • gphoto2 --help, shows all options of gphoto2
    
  • gphoto2 -P, downloads all the pictures from the digital camera to the current directory
    
  • gtkam is also available under /usr/sfw/bin directory, by default

Note that this is a one time only effort, and these steps need not be repeated everytime the digital camera has been plugged in to the system.

References and suggested reading:

1. Solaris USB FAQ
   
2. Dan Price's blog post - gtkam & USB on Solaris 10
   
3. Ben Rockwood's blog post - Canon Rebel XT on OpenSolaris
   
4. White Paper: Using the USB Generic Driver (Ugen) to Access USB Peripherals on Solaris Systems

Related blog entry:
JDS Linux & Sony DSC-V1/W1 Digital Camera

Thanks to fritS of Sun Microsystems, for his notes on using gphoto2 and gtkam with your digital camera

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