[How-To] Connect an Android device using MTP in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

[jdarby1983]

Hi,

After much looking around I was never able to find a how-to guide(or should I say the ones that did never worked)on how to connect my android tablet/phone to Ubuntu for file transfers, sure there's other means of doing it wireless via your LAN, but truth be told MTP and Ubuntu don't exactly see eye to eye and as such I hope the following guide I put together saves someone a lot of time and effort. This was performed on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

STEP 1
Firstly we're going to need to install some of the common MTP apps that will be needed. Open up a terminal and type the following two lines one after the other.

sudo apt-get install libmtp-common mtp-tools libmtp-dev libmtp-runtime libmtp9

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

STEP 2
Then we're going to amend the fuse.conf file. FUSE is an application that aims to provide a secure method for non privileged users to create and mount their own file system implementations. This option overrides the security measure restricting file access to the user mounting the file system. So all users (including root) can access the files. This option is by default only allowed to root, but this restriction can be removed with a change to the aforementioned fuse.conf file as follows:

At the terminal type

sudo nano /etc/fuse.conf

We want to remove the # from the below line of code for user_allow_other, like so...

#/etc/fuse.conf - Configuration file for Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE)

#Set the maximum number of FUSE mounts allowed to non-root users.
#The default is 1000.
#mount_max = 1000

# Allow non-root users to specify the allow_other or allow_root mount options.
user_allow_other

Now save the file by pressing Ctrl+x, press Y and then Enter.

STEP 3

We now need to set up some rules for our device that we plan on connecting, but before we do that we need to find out both the vendor and product id

Connect your device via an available usb port and from terminal enter

lsusb

This should bring up an output similar to the following

Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0fce:01b1 Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB 
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0461:4d65 Primax Electronics, Ltd 
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0846:9020 NetGear, Inc. WNA3100(v1) Wireless-N 300 [Broadcom BCM43231]

You need to look for your device, in this instance my Sony Tablet is at the top of the list, the vendor id is 0fce and product id is 01b1

STEP 4
We're then going to amend the mtp udev rules as follows, from a terminal type

sudo nano /lib/udev/rules.d/69-mtp.rules

Then add the below line of code

# Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet
ATTR{idVendor}=="0fce", ATTR{idProduct}=="01b1", SYMLINK+="libmtp-%k", ENV{ID_MTP_DEVICE}="1", ENV{ID_MEDIA_PLAYER}="1"

Remember what you're changing here is the device name next to the #, this can be whatever you want, the # comments out the code, but for clarity and reference later I would choose the name of your tablet/phone and also the vendor id and product id, they should match what was seen when you issued the lsusb command earlier.

Once done, save the file.

STEP 5
The next step would also be to add a line of code to the 51 android rules file, again from a terminal type

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

Then add the following line of code

ATTR{idVendor}=="0fce", ATTR{idProduct}=="01b1", MODE=”0666"

Remember what I have highlighted in red needs to be changed to your device product id and vendor id.

Once that is done and the file is saved, remove any usb device currently connected and issue the following commands

STEP 6

sudo service udev restart

Then save any other remaining work you may have open and reboot the system.

STEP 7

sudo reboot

Once rebooted you should now be able to plug your Android device in(making sure the screen is unlocked) and VIOLA!!(or at least I hope) You will now be able to transfer data to/from your Android device via the much quicker and much more reliable MTP

All feedback gladly welcome, would like to know if this has worked for this others too.

[livewirebt2]

[...]After much looking around I was never able to find a how-to guide(or should I say the ones that did never worked)[...]

Okay, you looked around and didn't find a good and crisp answer that works for you or your device. That's okay, I can understand that, because I've seen the MTP-confusion on AU and you must have spend some amount of time getting it to work for you. But do you think posting another device specific how-to is going to improve the situation? Also, there are some bits in your how-to that don't seem to make much sense. On the other side it would be beneficial to all users, to find out what issue you actually had, because MTP should work out of the box with the GVFS MTP backend since 13.04 or your device is just not supported by the libmtp version that is shipped with the particular release.

STEP 2
Then we're going to amend the fuse.conf file. FUSE is an application [...]

... FUSE shouldn't be involved in the out of the box solution as far as I know.

STEP3 + STEP 4

sudo nano /lib/udev/rules.d/69-mtp.rules

# Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet
ATTR{idVendor}=="0fce", ATTR{idProduct}=="01b1", SYMLINK+="libmtp-%k", ENV{ID_MTP_DEVICE}="1", ENV{ID_MEDIA_PLAYER}="1"

This looks interesting. I searched for 01b1 ony my machine in /lib/udev/rules.d/69-libmtp.rules but couldn't find it. You should file a bug to have the following lines included there.

# SONY Xperia Z2 MTP
ATTR{idVendor}=="0fce", ATTR{idProduct}=="01b1", SYMLINK+="libmtp-%k", MODE="660", GROUP="audio", ENV{ID_MTP_DEVICE}="1", ENV{ID_MEDIA_PLAYER}="1"

STEP 5

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

This file is supposed to contain udev rules for ADB and fastboot. None of them have anything to with MTP.

STEP 6 + STEP 7

sudo service udev restart

[...]

sudo reboot

Why restart udev when you reboot the machine shortly after?

[peter.hewett]

If this (above) isn't the correct way to connect an Android phone to a Linux box via USB, what is?
Is there a howto on this? (I couldn't find one that looks current.)

The system here is Kubuntu 14.04 and we have two different Android phones (Samsung Galaxy Nexus and S3).

TIA

Peter

[coffeecat]

@jdarby1983, a reminder of the Tutorials Sub-forum – Guidelines sticky:

Tutorials should be supported.

You are expected to offer support for your tutorial, within practical limits. If you fail to respond to requests for help or clarification within a reasonable time, or fail to update your tutorial, the thread will be closed or removed.

Please respond to the above two posts.

[bill-bouterse]

Trusty 14.04 on old Dell Latitude 630

All I can say is connecting my Lenova S6000 tablet to the Dell initially showed nothing.
After following the instructions of jdarby1983 and plugging in the Lenova device ID as suggested it now is recognized and is accessible.

I am not knowledgable enough to know if there are other or simpler methods. I am just happy it worked for me!

Someday it would be nice if the Android kernel would have Ext recognition for external devices compiled into it by default, but that is another story.
Not understanding the guts of MTP I was disappointed that my ext4 partition on the external sd card was not seen while the
original Fat32 portion was.

Ah well.

Anyway thanks to all for their efforts....

[Elena_cm]

Thanks @jdarby1983!!
Great step-by-step procedure and thank you so much for sharing it! Clear enough even for newbies like me. My Teclast P89 Mini tablet is now mounted in a blink of an eye on Ubuntu 14.04.
Keep up the good work!

[Satyanath_Bhat]

Of all the posts this works, please dont remove it.

[coffeecat]

Please respond to the above two posts.

One month later - no response.

@jdarby1983, if you change your mind and decide to support those posting to this thread, please request its re-opening by using the report button. Until then...

Thread closed.

Edit: Re-opened.

[jdarby1983]

I think some confusion here has arisen due to the title of this topic being "how to connect an android device using mtp in Ubuntu 14.04" when clearly my guide goes a little bit further than just MTP. So a point worth noting is perhaps the title needs changing. I do agree my Xperia Z2 tablet was not included I n the latest mtp release, my Samsung note 3 was and did work without and additional config

Not sure why you say I need to file a bug for having "01b1" this was highlighted in red and also referenced this is specific to the device you are trying to connect and will change from device to device.

Restarting udev and then rebooting the system was two steps I included as simply rebooting sometimes did not work, why? I don't know and can't explain further.

If this (above) isn't the correct way to connect an Android phone to a Linux box via USB, what is?
Is there a howto on this? (I couldn't find one that looks current.)

The system here is Kubuntu 14.04 and we have two different Android phones (Samsung Galaxy Nexus and S3).

TIA

Peter

Have you tried to follow my guide? If yes, how did you get on? I have not tested this way on kubuntu but would be interested to know if this works or not. Also there is no official how to on this, this guide was out together after much trial and error but from other posts its noted that it does work

Also great to here of the other devices users have managed to successfully mount following the guide

[ewr2san]

Kubuntu 14.04 people who had MTP working on a previous release may find that all they need to do is edit /etc/fuse.conf and uncomment #user_allow_other
to
user_allow_other

Aparently upgrading replaces /etc/fuse.conf...