Hi,

One of my clients has an Android smartphone. On his computer, he's running MLED 14.1 (Slackware 14.1 + Xfce). He connected the smartphone to his PC, but only got an error message (see attached screenshot).

Any idea what can be done to access this device?

Cheers,

Niki

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Hello,

Just a workaround, sorry but I gave up with MTP. I ended up managing files and folders on my android smartphone from Linux PC by FTP over USB this way.

Check that the device has MTP enabled. It's possible that it's disabled, or it has PTP enabled instead.

FWIW, I also abandoned MTP a while ago, as sebre, I find FTP much better.

To make Android smartphones work in Slackware you have to add udev rules to /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules
It should look like
You can get vendor and product IDs from lsusb
Also edit /etc/udev/rules.d/69-libmtp.rules
Now reload udev rules or reboot. MTP should be working now.

1 members found this post helpful.

afaik udev supports wildcards
so one could write these rules for all the smartphone usb adapters based just on vendor

AFAIK, 51-android.rules should only be needed for accessing USB debugging or fastboot/recovery (only when using the commands fastboot or adb). And I don't have any libmtp rules other than the defaults in /lib/udev/rules.d/, and I don't have any problems with my device being detected, and it's not listed in that file.

But, just as an FYI, you don't need the idProduct attribute. Leaving it out allows any device from that manufacturer/vendor to be recognized properly rather than adding each individual one. I have a massive android rules file that contains most manufacturers. It makes it easy when I switch devices because I don't have to edit additional rules to get it to work (since I tend to unlock my bootloaders and use adb and fastboot).

@Niki, if the other suggestions don't work, maybe try updating libmtp. I remember mine was quite old on my computer.

Kiki,

Have you tried libmtp? It's the only one I found worth the trouble. Nothing I found on slackbuilds works as well. It also comes with udev rules, so it should be able to integrate with the xfce desktop & thunar. Not sure at the moment.

Here it is: http://sourceforge.net/projects/libmtp/

I just did a fresh install on an old laptop - slack 14.1 & MLED 32bit - and plugged my android phone in and was able to open it with thunar with no problem.

libmtp is already included in a standard Slackware 14.1 installation.

OK, I must have meant mtpfs. Fuse based system.

I've never had any luck with the "stock" mtpfs or libmtp based software. I use go-mtpfs. It worked with my Samsung S3 and now with my LG G3, both under CyanogenMod. I've also used a sshd process on the phone and then via sshfs. That works, but not as fast as a direct USB cable connect.

Hi Niki,

Whilst I can understand the reasons Google removed the "USB mass storage" function from Android, it was the wrong thing to do.

Some versions of Android will allow you to re-enable sane USB storage functionality, but word on the street is that the latest versions don't.

In my experience, FTP works significantly better than MTP. The FTP server I use on my Android devices is: primitive ftpd. It works very well with gFTP which comes with Slackware.

I'm running Slackware 64 bit current with KDE and can connect to my Nexus 5 and Samsung tab S via mtp with thunar and dolphin. I believe KDE uses its own kio-mtp which has been working successfully for me for some time now.

I'll try that, but I wonder if by updating libmtp from 1.1.6 to 1.1.9 I will have to rebuild some stuff.

Suggestions?

I'm not sure I agree with you. Keep in mind, when a device is mounted as "USB mass storage" it disconnects it from Android and nothing that was on that device is available to the OS (which effectively rules out using this on internal storage, since that would disconnect /data, which is where all the apps and app data resides in the internal memory). This caused a lot of issues with people who had apps installed to the sdcard, because it would break any widgets or push notifications that were used by those apps. I saw constant posts on the CM forum about people having issues with apps/widgets when they mounted as USB storage. But at the same time MTP is a horrible protocol, and I wish something else would've been used/developed. It'll be interesting to see how Android 6.0/Marshmallow will handle sdcards.

I don't remember recompiling anything, but I built it back in December, so my memory may be off.

I just dug through my /var/log/packages, and I installed the newer libmtp (1.1.8) on 30 DEC, and I didn't install anything after that until 27 JAN, so it's reasonable to assume I didn't need to recompile anything to take advantage of the newer libmtp. I have no problems accessing my Nexus 6 with Konqueror/Dolphin, and I'd assume it is the same with Thunar.