If I plug my phone into a Windows 10 system a notification becomes available on the phone which allows various options such as 'transfer files'. The phone previously did the same thing when I would plug it into my Linux Mint desktop. At some point it stopped doing this. Now when plugging my G5 into a USB port there is no response on the linux system at all. The USB port will charge the phone but there is no 'data' connection at all.

The lsusb command does not show anything different after plugging in the phone. I cannot pinpoint exactly when this stopped functioning but it was possibly after an OS update on the phone.

Am open to any comments, advice, or suggestions.

Thanks in advance,

look in dmesg after you plug in your phone to your mint box.

Have you tried other usb ports?

Nothing in dmesg.

Hey, I was facing the same problem so I did some research and I found this solution.
First of all, You have to enable Developer Options on your Android phone, simply follow this guide!

Go to,

Stock Android: Settings > About phone > Build number

when you see "build number" starts to click consecutively on it until you see the message "You are now a developer"
to enable developer option in moto g5 follow the below instrustion:

1. Under settings, head onto ‘About phone‘ option and tap on it.
2. Under About phone, scroll down to bottom and tap on ‘Build number‘ 7 times. Once you tap Build number 7 times, the message will appear “You are now a developer!”

after you are a developer go to developer option, enable Developing and check that "Debug USB" has "the green V".
after you do this steps, connect your phone, and you should see it as a normal drive

Developer options are on and "USB debugging" is enabled. Still nothing when I plug in the phone. I do not see "Debug USB" or any "green V".

sharky, it seems part of the problem is in your phone.
you need to tell it to "transfer files" when connecting via usb.
the option is probably still there in the settings, you just dont get the notification anymore.

nothing at all?
i find that hard to believe.
please show us.

it certainly doesn't show up as a "normal drive" without installing some rather unconventional software. definitely not on linux, and i don't think windows does this either.
but who am i to contradict techblogger911...

however, it's good to enable adb debugging, because one can do loads of stuff via adb, including copying to and from, and running a shell on the phone.
of course you need to have 'adb' (android debug bridge) installed on your computer.

Have you tried a different USB cable? Solved my issues with using a G5 as a USB tethered device

The output of dmesg is over 900 lines so I can't show it directly. What I did was run dmesg and redirect the output to a file, plugged in the phone, ran dmesg and directed the output to another file. Then ran diff on the two files and got nothing return - no changes.

Still looking for a different usb cable. It's uncanny how I can find them all over the place when I'm looking for a network cable.

Found another usb cable - no joy. Also tried different usb ports with no change.

well that's one way of doing it.
you could also try:
then press enter a few times to get a visual divider.
then plug in the phone, give it about 10 seconds to settle.
there should be some new output now.
really nothing?
then there must be a hardware problem: cable, usb port on computer or phone.

Running 'dmesg -w' yields a segfault.

It did not return to the prompt after the segfault so I tried the steps you suggested and saw nothing.

Google has made Android file systems increasing difficult to see and manipulate via USB.

You might take a look at Airdroid. You can use it to transfer files locally without creating an Airdroid account; I use it daily to transfer podcasts to my phone.

If you use KDE, KDEconnect works quite nicely,

^ frankbell, if even dmesg cannot see it it must be a hardware problem.
i mean, even if my phone is set to charging only, and adb debugging disabled, the kernel still notices that something has plugged into the usb port:

I've just checked this with my G5 and my Mint 19 system.
The phone charges but dmesg has no output.
I did notice that there was a recent security update with the Moto G5, perhaps it has disabled access through the usb port.
I will try with some more micro USB cables and see if I can find one that will work.
The phone doesn't recognise that it is plugged in from a USB data perspective. (Data sharing via USB says "not plugged into USB).