[Noisebridge-discuss] Anyone able to transfer files from a post-Gingerbread Android device to their Linux box?

[John Magolske]

When plugging my Samsung Galaxy Relay phone into a Windows box via
USB, the filesystem comes right up [1] and I can transfer files, etc.
But on my Linux (Debian Sid) ThinkPad I can not access any of the
files on this phone.

Apparently starting with Android Honeycomb, storage is no longer
accessed as a USB mass-storage drive, but rather exposed via MTP &
PTP. I guess there are advantages to the approach [2], but one major
disadvantage I'm finding is that I cannot access any of the files on
this phone from my Linux laptop:

  % mtpfs -o allow_other /mnt/phone
  [...]
  Attempting to connect device
  PTP_ERROR_IO: failed to open session, trying again after resetting USB interface
  LIBMTP libusb: Attempt to reset device
  LIBMTP PANIC: failed to open session on second attempt
  Unable to open raw device 0

Looks like a bug in libmtp (& maybe mtpfs) [3] is responsible, but in
searching around for solutions I get the impression that file transfer
between post-Gingerbread Android devices and Linux boxen is generally
marginal. If you've experience otherwise, could you share your success
stories?

[1] Seems like a security issue to me -- plug phone into computer to
    charge it and all the phone's files are automatically exposed to
    the computer. Old Android devices required you to explicitly mount
    the filesystem, allowing USB charging sans filesystem exposure.

[2] http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/26288/how-can-i-use-my-galaxy-nexus-as-an-external-usb-storage-drive/26538#26538

[3] http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.org/msg1087524.html

Regards,

John

-- 
John Magolske
http://B79.net/contact