So I guess this weekend I can try just running a straight "startx" after setting things to just boot to the command line. I think I can also run xmonad without gnome or maybe even another display manager ( IceWM ?).
Note this is not necessarily GUI related. udev rules run whether you are running X or not.
Is there some additional information that could be dumped to the log window when one of the GUI buttons is pressed (and noting happens ...) ?
Not really.
Switching to rec mode is not special, it's just a lua function like any other. The fact that everything but switching to rec mode works as expected really means this is some internal camera state difference, not a client problem or a communication problem. As I explained in my previous post, ignoring keys like set, arrows etc is a separate, known issue (also due to camera state, not due to CHDK doing anything differently).
If you send
=switch_mode_usb(1)
to the camera, and there is no error but the camera doesn't switch, it clearly means this function is not behaving as it normally does.
This is the firmware doing something different, not the client or CHDK doing something different. The USB connection is fine, the command was sent successfully, nothing in the client can tell the difference between this and any other function. As far as the client was concerned, everything worked fine, so there's really nothing to log.
If I get a minute, I'll see if I can track down something that logs USB port activity more closely too.
The kernel log (usually something like /var/kern.log and dmesg output) may have something.
A question, when you are connecting for the first time with chdkptp, do you get something like
open_camera_dev: ptp_opensession failed 0x2ff
open_camera_dev:usb_ptp_device_reset(): Device or resource busy
usb_ptp_get_device_status(): Device or resource busy
connected: Canon PowerShot D10, max packet size 512
If so, this means that something else had the camera open at the time. If not, that doesn't mean nothing touched it, but whatever it is probably doesn't have it open.
@frojnd
What distros / versions are you using, and what desktop?