"Unspecified error" when connecting camera on 64-bit Ubuntu

Solution 1:

I have the same issue on Ubuntu 12.10 (64-bit) with a Canon EOS 400D. I found reports about this only happening when connecting the camera through a USB3.0 port, but not when plugging in the cable to a USB2.0 port; however, this workaround is not working for me with an Asus N76VM laptop. Maybe it works for you.

Solution 2:

A workaround that worked for me was killing both gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor and gvfs-mtp-volume-monitor. I killed the gphoto2-one first, so I don't know if it was necessary or if just killing the mtp-one would have worked.

Solution 3:

Blizzara's answer led me to a proper solution - gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor is interfering. I tried killing it, but it's keeps coming back.

So I took the sledgehammer and whacked it right upside the head like this:

sudo chmod 644 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor 

And that did it! (Of course, I did have to do a ps ax | grep gvfs-gphoto once and kill the already-running process.) Shotwell now downloads my pictures like a charm! I'm sure there's a better solution to this problem, not to mention that we shouldn't be having this problem in the first place, but I'll take this for now.

Btw, since Blizzara led me to this, B's answer deserves an upvote.